Nine things to look out for at the 2021 Daytona 24 Hours

The 2021 IMSA SportsCar Championship kicks off this weekend with a packed grid of 49 cars contesting the traditional season-opening Daytona 24 Hours.

With reigning Daytona Prototype international teams' championship winner Team Penske not returning and close runner-up Wayne Taylor Racing learning new machinery, there's a different look and feel to the new season, which welcomes LMP3 machinery for the first time and marks the swansong for the GT Le Mans class.

Here are the nine things you need to know before the race gets underway on Saturday.

1. New horizons for Wayne Taylor

Cut Wayne Taylor in half and he's probably got General Motors written large right through him. The long-time entrant and former driver has links with the US giant stretching back 30 years to a programme with a Chevrolet-powered Intrepid GTP car. His tally of Daytona 24 Hours victories with Cadillac stretches to four and there was one with Pontiac, too, while an operation he put together masterminded Caddy's Northstar LMP Le Mans 24 Hours programme in 2001 and 2002. Yet now he's on the grid with an Acura. So what's going on?

"We're not going out there to just drive around because it's our first race with a new car. We're going out there to win" Wayne Taylor

The 64-year-old makes no secret as to why Wayne Taylor Racing has switched camps for this season to field an Acura ARX-05 in the IMSA SportsCar Championship after winning the 24 Hours for Cadillac in three of the four seasons of the Daytona Prototype international era. His reasons were all about the green and folding stuff.

"I made a statement after winning Daytona last year that I needed to be factory backed or at least semi-factory," he explains. "I told GM that I needed a little bit more money, that I shouldn't be sponsoring the brand."

Acura and its Honda Performance Development motorsport organisation came knocking on WTR's door over the course of last year.

"When I was being courted by Acura, I said, 'but you've got Penske' [which ran the ARX-05s in 2018-20]," explains Taylor. "They told me the contract was expiring and they wanted to regroup, and that I'd won all the big races, something they'd never managed."

There are other reasons for Taylor's decision to leave the GM family. Acura was further down the road in its plans to enter the LMDh class due to come on stream in 2023, a category that will make the machine in Taylor's workshops eligible for Le Mans. It made ambitions for the new formula clear on the announcement of WTR and Meyer Shank Racing as its teams for 2021 last September and then confirmed its LMDh participation this week. GM, meanwhile, is still evaluating its options.

"I've said all along that I want to do LMDh and I want to take one of those cars to Le Mans," says Taylor, who has revealed that he has a three-year contract with Acura that will take his team into the new era. "It's the one big race I haven't won. I want to be there in LMDh."

For the moment, though, the focus is on delivering a first win for the ARX-05 in one of IMSA's blue riband races this weekend with son Ricky and Filipe Albuquerque, his full-season drivers, and Helio Castroneves and Alexander Rossi.

"We've stepped things up: we have more people, another engineer," he says. "We're not going out there to just drive around because it's our first race with a new car. We're going out there to win."

2. Mazda ready to win

Mazda notched up its biggest sportscar victory since its 1991 Le Mans triumph at the rescheduled Sebring 12 Hours last November. Harry Tincknell, who shared that win with Jonathan Bomarito and Ryan Hunter-Reay, reckons the RT24-P is now ready to go one better than its second place at Daytona last year.

"This programme remains on an upwards trajectory: each year we're getting better and better," says Tincknell, who shares the solo Mazda Motorsports entry with fellow Brit Oliver Jarvis and Bomarito. "The car is more proven than it has ever been."

The small-capacity AER turbo in the back of the RT24-P has never proved as reliable as Cadillac's 6.2-litre normally-aspirated V8

Tincknell isn't taking the reliability of the RT24-P for granted, even though many reckon 12 hours over the bumps of the Sebring International Raceway are at least as hard as 24 at Daytona. He knows that the small-capacity AER turbo in the back of the RT24-P has never proved as reliable as Cadillac's 6.2-litre normally-aspirated V8.

"The car was strong at Sebring, but there's a lot less flat-out running there than at Daytona - at Sebring you barely get into sixth gear down the back straight," he says. "But we did finish second at Daytona last year and AER has been making continual improvements with the engine and the processes."

Tincknell concedes that Mazda's downscaled single-car attack with the Multimatic team for 2021 is a double-edged sword.

"It means that all our eggs are in one basket," he says, "but on the other hand focusing on one car has its benefits."

3. Ganassi back in sportscars

Chip Ganassi Racing is back on the IMSA grid, now representing Cadillac in the DPi ranks, after a season away. The team, six times an overall winner at Daytona, describes 2020 as a sabbatical, because it was always its intention to return after the end of the Ford GT programme in 2019.

Ganassi managing director Mike Hull reveals that the team never stopped working on a return after it realised that the Ford IMSA deal that encompassed an annual trip to Le Mans in 2016-19 was coming to an end. The deal with Cadillac to run a single DPi-V.R in the series is the culmination of those efforts.

"CGR relishes being able to have different programmes running at the same time and what it does for our team and brand," says Hull of an organisation that also runs cars in IndyCar, the NASCAR Cup and, from this year, Extreme E.

"We worked very hard in our sabbatical to be able to do that, while reallocating the majority of our staff elsewhere within our organisation. The relationship with GM is a culmination of those efforts."

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Ask if the priority was a manufacturer deal or a return to the top flight of North American sportscar racing after spending 12 seasons in the Daytona Prototype category in 2004-15, Hull replies: "Both - I think you can check both those boxes."

"The important thing in sportscar racing is to have factory alignment," he continues. "That creates the legs you need to go forward. I think it's fair to say we have factory support."

Ganassi also has a driver straight out of Formula 1 on its books in Kevin Magnussen. The outgoing Haas driver will share in the full season with Renger van der Zande, who has moved over from WTR, while Scott Dixon joins them this weekend from the team's IndyCar squad.

"The important thing in sportscar racing is to have factory alignment. That creates the legs you need to go forward. I think it's fair to say we have factory support" Mike Hull

That line-up is the result of what Hull describes as a "cross-over between opportunity and availability". He adds that the team believes its drivers have the qualities "to make a difference".

Ganassi's entry into the Cadillac fold is part of a rejig of the GM brand's IMSA assault. The JDC-Miller MotorSports squad is running one rather than two DPi-V.Rs this season, but Action Express Racing is back with a pair of cars for Daytona, the second featuring previous event winners Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Rockenfeller alongside Simon Pagenaud and seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.

That's a significant development for a team that added a third victory in the season-opener in 2018 with a Cadillac DPi to its 2010 and 2014 triumphs with Daytona Prototype machinery.

4. No qualifying this week

Conventional against-the-clock qualifying has been banished from Daytona this year. The grid is now set by a 100-minute qualifying race, known as the Motul Pole Award 100, that's already taken place. Action Express drivers Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani triumphed in last Sunday's event to claim pole position for the big race, in which they will share driving duties with Mike Conway and Chase Elliott.

They also gathered 35 points in the team's bid to win the championship for the first time since Nasr and Eric Curran brought home the end-of-season trophy in 2018. That's another new development for 2021.

The same points awarded for last weekend's race will be dished out for regular qualifying over the remainder of the IMSA season. As part of the new system, the number of points for each of the races has been increased tenfold, so that means 350 for a win, while 35 are on offer for pole, 32 for second on the grid and so on.

5. LMP2: a new quantity and quality

The LMP2 field has doubled in size over last year for the 2021 opener, and the level has shot up, too. DragonSpeed is fielding a pair of ORECA-Gibson 07s in its bid for a hat-trick of class wins at Daytona, while World Endurance Championship teams Racing Team Nederland and High Class Racing are making one-offs in the IMSA opener. They have joined the likes of PR1/Mathiasen and Starworks Motorsport, both IMSA regulars, on the entry list.

DragonSpeed boss Elton Julian, who has Ben Hanley and Christopher Mies on his driver roster, reckons his success over the past two years has convinced the European teams against which it has raced in both the WEC and the European Le Mans Series to join the party.

"There are drivers on the grid in P2 this year because they know what's around the corner. They want to get their foot in the door" Elton Julian

"They've seen what we have done and are thinking, we'd like to have some of that," says the sometime International Formula 3000 driver. "Our success has raised a few eyebrows."

The other factors for the up-turn in the entry, he reckons, include the switch to a pro-am format last year: a bronze driver is now mandatory in each crew. "It's given P2 a bit more legs over here," he says.

Then there's the arrival of the LMP2-based LMDh class in IMSA in 2023 and with it the return of Porsche and Audi to the top flight of sportscar racing.

"There are drivers on the grid in P2 this year because they know what's around the corner," he suggests. "They want to get their foot in the door."

That probably explains why a certain Robert Kubica is turning out with High Class this weekend.

6. Tandy in a Corvette, Gavin in a Lexus

Nick Tandy has left the employ of Porsche after eight seasons, seven of which he was a regular in GT Le Mans in IMSA. The lure of continuing in the class brought him to Corvette Racing in 2021 after the German manufacturer announced it would be exiting the class at the end of last season.

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"I loved my family at CORE Autosport [which ran the factory 911 RSRs] and Porsche, but at the end of the day there was no option to go racing in GTLM and IMSA, which has been my favourite race series and my favourite racing across the globe over the last 15 years," he says. "GTLM and GTE is super competitive; the cars are great, it's factory against factory and it's great competition. It didn't take long to say yes and come to an agreement that we'd go forward."

Tandy has taken fellow Brit Oliver Gavin's seat in the #4 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R alongside Tommy Milner. The veteran could yet be seen in a Corvette again, just not as a full-timer, so he's most definitely not hanging up his helmet. That explains why he's racing for the Vasser Sullivan team at the wheel of a Lexus RC F GT3 this weekend.

PLUS: Oliver Gavin's Corvette Racing highlights

7. A reduced field in GT Le Mans

Porsche's withdrawal from GTLM, announced last summer, was a body blow for a category that had already lost Ford at the end of 2019. BMW, meanwhile, is only doing the four rounds that make up the Michelin-sponsored Endurance Cup and the Risi Competizione Ferrari squad has yet to make its post-Daytona plans clear. In light of the dwindling interest, IMSA has announced that 2021 will be the final season for the class, before it is replaced by a new GTD Pro division next year.

"There are more cars and we have the LMP3 cars this year, so I could imagine that there will be more yellows than in the past two or three years" Kevin Estre

But the Corvettes will definitely have opposition over the full 2021 season from a customer Porsche 911 RSR fielded under the WeatherTech Racing banner by the German Proton Competition squad, better known for its exploits as Dempsey-Proton in the WEC. Regular driver Cooper MacNeil is joined at Daytona by a trio of factory drivers in Kevin Estre, Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz.

Estre, who is racing at Daytona for the first time since 2017, reckons that the presence of a silver-rated driver in the line-up doesn't necessarily scrub out the chances of Porsche winning the class for the first time since 2014.

"We're not the favourites on paper, but the package is good enough to have strong result and with a little bit of luck maybe win it," says the Frenchman. "There are more cars and we have the LMP3 cars this year, so I could imagine that there will be more yellows than in the past two or three years.

"The race isn't going to be about fighting for the last tenth in traffic in hour two. More important will be to have a clean race and stay out of trouble, and then see where we are in the last couple of hours."

8. Big names in GTD

The GT Daytona class for GT3 machinery looks stronger than ever, not so much in numbers but the quality of driver. The grid is up one on last year, but scroll down the entry list and you'll find the likes of Laurens Vanthoor, Earl Bamber, Ryan Briscoe and JR Hildebrand.

Vanthoor, a regular in IMSA since joining Porsche for 2017, has found a new home in GTD with the Pfaff Motorsport team, sharing a 911 GT3-R in the full season with Zach Robichon. The Porsche factory driver concedes that it is a step down, but he insists that the competition will be no less intense.

"In GTLM the level was super high, but there weren't many cars," he says. "In GTD there are a lot more cars. It is not easy to compare; it's just different."

Vanthoor reckons that this year's GTD grid is among the strongest ever and he believes with Robichon he'd be up there among the favourites. That's why he was happy to remain at Porsche in a less high-profile category while he waits for the German manufacturer's LMDh project to come on stream.

"My dream is to try to win Daytona and Le Mans overall with Porsche," he says. "It was a clear choice on my part, but I know I'm going to be racing on some great circuits and in a competitive championship this year."

9. A new class - LMP3

LMP3 has slowly spread around the world since its launch in Europe back in 2015. The first rung on the Automobile Club de l'Ouest's prototype ladder was brought into the IMSA arena in the Prototype Challenge support series in 2017 and now has been given a home in the main championship.

There are seven cars on the entry for this weekend and possibly more to come when the full series kicks off at Sebring in March. LMP3 runners, like those in LMP2, only score points towards the four-race Endurance Cup this weekend.

"LMP3 is the easiest, most affordable route to get there. It's a lot cheaper than GTD by a solid $750,000" Bill Riley

Bill Riley, whose organisation has won Daytona outright on two occasions as a team and a further 11 times as a constructor, is running a pair of Ligier-Nissan JSP320s and reckons LMP3 is a good fit for the main IMSA series.

"A lot of drivers have the goal of doing Daytona and Sebring," he says. "P3 is the easiest, most affordable route to get there. It's a lot cheaper than GTD by a solid $750,000."

Many are predicting that the arrival of the LMP3s on the main IMSA grid could change the dynamic of the racing. The LMP3s are capable of similar laps times to the GTLM machinery, upsetting the 'class separation' of which IMSA has much talked down the years. Others, like Estre, point to the days of the Prototype Challenge class for the ORECA-Chevrolet FLM09 one-make racer. They had a habit of causing yellow-flag safety-car periods.