Why one car was "too fast for everyone" at Daytona

Wayne Taylor Racing made it two Daytona 24 Hours triumphs in a row last weekend, and three from four in the Daytona Prototype era.

Twelve months ago, its Cadillac led 259 of the 593 laps. This time around, WTR drivers Ryan Briscoe, Renger van der Zande, Kamui Kobayashi and Scott Dixon topped the leaderboard for 493 of the record 833 laps. That's nearly 60% of the race duration compared with just over 40% last year.

What makes that statistic so impressive is that the #10 WTR Cadillac DPi-V.R came back from a series of delays, each time regaining the initiative in double-quick order. It lost time with a drivethrough penalty, a lights issue, a change of brakes, a power-steering glitch and then a one-minute stop/go.

It was almost as if it was trying to give the opposition a chance. The reality was that Penske, Mazda and the other Cadillac teams didn't have much of one of those at the IMSA SportsCar Championship opener. And they knew it.

"They were in a different league," said Mazda driver Oliver Jarvis, who ended up just over a minute behind in second position in the Mazda RT24-P he shared with Tristan Nunez and Olivier Pla.

"They had more pace than everyone. We can't be disappointed that we didn't win because we did the maximum today. We had a pretty much perfect race, apart from one penalty, but they were just better than us."

The Penske Acura squad had its problems last weekend and could only salvage fourth and eighth-place finishes. Yet it knew that its ARX-05s, with or without problems, weren't a match for the winning Cadillac.

"Realistically we weren't going to win it," said Juan Pablo Montoya, who shared the first of the ORECA-based Acuras home with Dane Cameron and Simon Pagenaud. "The WTR car was just faster."

The Action Express Racing and JDC-Miller Cadillac teams knew that WTR had once again found something they hadn't with the DPi-V.R. There were times when their examples of the Dallara-based contender were at the very least a match for the race winner, but not consistently so.

The Whelen-sponsored Action Express car ended up an unrepresentative seventh after two delays, but Filipe Albuquerque reckoned the Cadillac he shared with Felipe Nasr, Pipo Derani and Mike Conway was only a "second-place car".

"WTR did a back-to-back with last year's and this year's tyres at Sebring in December and worked out what the car needed from the new rubber" Ryan Briscoe

Three-time Daytona winner Joao Barbosa, who finished third with Loic Duval and Sebastien Bourdais in the Mustang Sampling-backed JDC-Miller machine, summed it up succinctly with the words "the #10 was too fast for everyone".

So why was the WTR Cadillac just plain better than its rivals over the course of the 24 Hours last weekend? Probably because once again it got the most out of the spec Michelin tyre.

This time last year, that meant keeping the grooved wet in the window in horrendous conditions that eventually brought the event to an early conclusion. This time it was about looking after the latest medium-compound slick tyre.

"I'm not sure everyone else worked out how to make the 2020 tyre work," said Briscoe, who will contest the full IMSA season alongside van der Zande.

"The team did a back-to-back with last year's and this year's tyres at Sebring in December and worked out what the car needed from the new rubber. We didn't have the straightline speed, but we were able to brake deeper and get off the corners better than the rest. And we could turn the same times from the beginning of a stint on the tyres to the end. The others were hurting a bit more with degradation."

Team boss Wayne Taylor and his co-owner Max Angelelli also paid tribute to his all-star crew and the depth of knowledge they brought to the WTR operation. Angelelli, who was part of the team's line-up for its 2017 victory, explained that they called on their drivers' combined experience across multiple disciplines to try to improve the car.

Kobayashi, for example, came up with what van der Zande described as "a really weird set-up change on the traction control" after the pre-event Roar test at the start of the month.

The WTR Cadillac had qualified only fifth and didn't make it to the top of the leaderboard until after the one-hour mark, and then only for four laps. The car was back in the lead later in the same hour, but minor delays stopped the team from establishing itself there.

Kobayashi overtook Nunez for the lead late in the third hour, only to lose time at the next round of stops when he was given a drivethrough for pitlane speeding. The Japanese driver was back up to second when the first safety car was called in the sixth hour, only for the car to drop to fifth when WTR had to change the rear body section because one of the lights was malfunctioning.

WTR had a healthy lead of more than 20s early in hour 11 when the safety car came out for a third time. The team opted to make a precautionary change of brake discs and again dropped back.

A protracted period of green-flag running stretching for seven hours and 50 minutes - a modern record at Daytona - allowed WTR to build a comfortable advantage for the first time. Kobayashi took the lead from Barbosa at the end of hour 13, and then pulled away from the Portuguese, and later Bourdais.

But a lead of approaching 80s turned into a one-lap deficit shortly after Briscoe took over from van der Zande at 7.30am.

First, the car cut out on the banking. Briscoe recycled the car's electronics and got going again, though without power-steering. He was in the pitlane when he was told to flick another switch, which cured that problem and meant he was able to drive past his team and continue on his way without losing the lead.

The long-held lead did disappear, however, when the fourth safety-car period of the race was called shortly afterwards. Briscoe failed to see the red light at the pit exit and was handed a 60s stop/go penalty for his misdemeanour.

Just the three cars finished on the lead lap of a race interrupted by only six safety-car periods

Favour smiled on WTR at this juncture of the race. The Australian dropped off the lead lap as a result of the penalty, but two more caution periods allowed him to get back up with the leaders within an hour or so.

Then, from fourth, he was able to work his way back into the lead. Once the WTR car got back to the front, in hour 20, it stayed there for all but one of the remaining 144 laps.

Mazda hadn't got one of its RT24-Ps based on the Riley/Multimatic LMP2 chassis to the finish of Daytona in three attempts, so second was still "a major achievement", according to Jarvis.

"The engine never missed a beat," said the Briton, hinting at the issues with the AER four-cylinder turbo that have blighted its previous Daytona campaigns. "This is a huge step forward for us and a great way to start the season."

The sister car shared by Harry Tincknell, Jonathan Bomarito and Ryan Hunter-Reay ended up sixth. A boost-pressure issue, which the team suspected was caused by a wastegate or an exhaust problem, held the car back from early in the race. The second RT24-P progressively lost power, which explains why it was 10 laps down at the finish.

The challenge of the JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac wilted on Sunday morning. The car had come alive in Duval's hands during the night, the Frenchman propelling the DPi-V.R into the lead in hour 11. The higher downforce level run by this car at least partially explains its pace in the night and why it faded after sunrise.

But the fact that the car had run over an errant wing mirror, damaging the underfloor, didn't help the cause of Duval, Bourdais and Barbosa. They had nothing for the Mazda that ultimately took second place, Duval finishing 20s in arrears of Jarvis.

The Action Express DPi-V.R dropped a couple of laps off the lead when Derani sustained a puncture and had to drive almost a complete lap of the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway at reduced pace. The car was also in gearbox problems by this stage, having lost second gear. The team was able to manage the problem for much of the night, before the transmission gave up the ghost. That resulted in a 21-minute stop for a new gear cluster and the distant seventh-place finish.

Just the three cars finished on the lead lap of a race interrupted by only six safety-car periods. The next best car, the Acura Montoya shared with Dane Cameron and Simon Pagenaud, was five laps down after sustaining right-front suspension damage in a collision on Saturday evening with the second-string JDC-Miller Cadillac.

Montoya was at the wheel at the time and reckoned the incident undid the race for him and his team-mates: "We had a porpoising in the car that came from there because it damaged the suspension." It also resulted in an unscheduled brake change, taken under green flags, that cost the car a couple of laps.

There was inevitably some disquiet in the Acura camp over the Balance of Performance. This team was the loser in the pre-event reshuffle, a reduction in boost pressure robbing it of a handful of horsepower while Cadillac got 10 of the 20kg it had been given for the Roar taken away for the race.

The sister Acura shared by Helio Castroneves, Ricky Taylor and Alexander Rossi brought up the rear of the DPi pack after losing 22 laps to repairs when the first-named was tagged by Tincknell at the Bus Stop and hit the barriers.

Taylor reckoned that the car "was as good after the incident as it had been before", but stressed that still wasn't good enough to take the fight to his father's team.

"I told the guys that we shouldn't be too downbeat, because it's better to have bad luck when you don't have a competitive car," he said. "There's no way we could have beaten dad's team."