The Daytona 24 Hours run that might be about to end

Cadillac has notched up a run of three consecutive victories at the Daytona 24 Hours. That adds up to a 100% record in the era of the Daytona Prototype international regulations, but the smart money is on that run coming to an end when the new IMSA SportsCar Championship season kicks off at the self-styled World Center of Racing this weekend.

Even Wayne Taylor, whose eponymous team has claimed two of three victories for the Cadillac DPi-V.R since 2017, reckons the tide is going to turn in favour of either Acura or Mazda. The boss of Wayne Taylor Racing is known for his pessimism, but he concedes that the team's rivals at the front of the IMSA grid finally look ready to win the Rolex-sponsored US enduro.

That's something that wasn't the case in past years. Cadillac was the best prepared of the DPi manufacturers when the new era kicked off at Daytona three years ago - it got its car out first, in the September of the previous year - and, as far as 24-hour racing went, retained that advantage through into last year's edition of the big US enduro.

Mazda, Acura and Nissan, now absent from the DPi ranks, showed speed, but not always consistently so. They also lacked the reliability of the Dallara-based Cadillacs.

Acura was on the pace the moment it arrived in the DPi division with the Penske Racing team and the ARX-05 based on the ORECA 07 LMP2. It was quick on its debut at Daytona in 2018, but not reliable. Last year, it just wasn't quick enough at the right time.

Taylor is making Acura, last season's IMSA title winner with Juan Pablo Montoya and Dane Cameron, the pre-race favourite.

"If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Acura," says Taylor, whose solo DPi-V.R is shared by Renger van der Zander and Ryan Briscoe for the full-season, with Kamui Kobayashi and Scott Dixon joining them this weekend. "That's based on what they did last year at Daytona, what they did over the rest of the season and what they did at the Roar [the pre-event test earlier this month]."

We were struggling to get energy into the tyres by playing around with the pressures, so we added some more downforce - and ended up going slower!" Ricky Taylor on Penske's 2019 Daytona struggles in the wet

Acura appeared to be establishing a grip on the 2019 Daytona 24 Hours late on Saturday night and early Sunday morning. But the ARX-05s couldn't match the winning WTR Cadillac in which Fernando Alonso and Kobayashi joined regulars Jordan Taylor and van der Zande, nor that of the second-place Action Express Racing Caddy, in the heaviest of the rain that ultimately brought about an early end to the race.

Ricky Taylor, who finished third with Helio Castroneves and Alexander Rossi, describes Daytona 2019 as an "eye opener" for the team. That's because it was stepping into the unknown with a car that it had barely run in the wet beforehand.

It never encountered rain during testing and there was a wet track for just one session of free practice over the course of the 2018 IMSA trail. And that was before the IMSA prototypes classes had switched from Continental to Michelins tyres.

"Last year's race was a wake-up call," says Taylor, who was part of the winning line-up in his father's WTR entry at Daytona in 2017. "We never had a proper opportunity to test the car in the wet, so we were learning as we went along. We were struggling to get energy into the tyres by just playing around with the pressures, so we added some more downforce - and ended up going slower!"

Those problems in the race at Daytona last year explain why the two Penske Acuras were out on the circuit whenever there was a wet or damp track during its successful 2019 IMSA campaign.

"When there normally wouldn't be anything to gain by running in the wet, we were out there," explains Taylor, who is again driving with Castroneves and Rossi this weekend. "We were trying to gain as much experience as we could."

Taylor reckons 2020 could be Acura's year as Penske bids to repeat its previous success at Daytona back in 1969: "We've got all the niggles out of the car and opened up the window of adjustability now that we've got a couple of seasons under our belt. We know we've got the pace, so why not?"

Acura topped only one of the seven practice sessions at the Roar. Quickest in four of them, as well as the qualifying session that determines the allocation of pit boxes, was Mazda.

The big underachiever of the DPi era finally got a monkey off its back by winning an IMSA race at Watkins Glen last June, and followed it up with more victories at Mosport and Road America. But what it hasn't done is get one of its AER-engined RT24-Ps, developed out of the Riley/Multimatic Mk30 P2, to the end of the race at Daytona over the past three years.

Mazda driver Harry Tincknell backs away from predicting that the marque's sportscar operation, in which Joest Racing's involvement alongside Multimatic is expected to come to an end after the Sebring 12 Hours in March, will win this time around.

Cadillac led just two test sessions, but has had 10kg of its 20kg minimum-weight increase removed. It's kept the increase in engine air-restrictor diameter, while Acura has had a boost curve adjustment that will rob it of some horsepower

"We've done two Sebrings without problems, but Daytona demands the maximum amount from the engine," says the Briton, who shares with Jonathan Bomarito and, for the enduros, Ryan Hunter-Reay. "We've been working hard in the off-season: all the problems we've encountered have been rectified and we've spent five or six days testing at Daytona and pushing hard.

"We are not taking anything for granted, but we know that if we are there on the lead lap in the last couple of laps, then we have the pace to win it."

Cadillac has also been numerically superior to the opposition since the start of the DPi era. It has always been represented by more than two cars.

IMSA stalwart Action Express Racing is down to one car this season, though the Mustang Sampling sponsorship that appeared on the flanks of its winning entry in 2018 has moved across to the JDC-Miller Motorsport squad, which graduated to the DPi ranks last year from the ORECA P2.

JDC-Miller now has a top-line driver line-up in its lead car. Joao Barbosa, a three-time Daytona winner with Action Express, has teamed up with IndyCar refugee Sebastien Bourdais for the full-season, with 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours winner Loic Duval joining them for the enduros.

The combination of this line-up as a team that was a class winner at Daytona back in 2016 in the old Prototype Challenge one-make division appears to add up to a like-for-like replacement for the missing Action car. So Cadillac is still ahead on numbers.

Cadillac was quickest in just two of the sessions at the Roar, but it has had 10kg of the 20kg increase in minimum weight it was given ahead of the test taken away. It has kept the increase in engine air-restrictor diameter, while the Acura has had a boost curve adjustment that will rob it of a handful of horsepower in the top half of its rev range.

What effect that will have on Ricky Taylor's bid to get his hands on a second Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, part of the prize for winning the 24 Hours, remains to be seen. But he's keen to level up the family tally of these exclusive timepieces. His father has two, for his wins as a driver in 1996 and 2005, and so does brother Jordan, now part of the Corvette Racing line-up in the GT Le Mans class.

"It would be great to beat Dad," he says. "Everyone else has got two watches and I've only got one, so I need another."