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Daytona 24 Hours: Action Express leads Penske, Alonso's car sixth

The Action Express Cadillac team led the Daytona 24 Hours at one quarter distance with Mike Conway, while Fernando Alonso's car moved from 14th to sixth in the opening hours

The Briton moved up from third position in the Whelen-sponsored Action Express Cadillac DPi-V.R after stopping for slick tyres two laps earlier than the cars ahead of him at the end of a short-period of wet running.

Conway, who is partnered by Felipe Nasr, Eric Curran and Stuart Middleton, held a seven-second advantage over the best of the Penske Acura ARX-05s in the hands of Helio Castroneves as the IMSA SportsCar Championship opener hit the six-hour mark.

Castoneves, sharing the car with Ricky Taylor and Graham Rahal, had just taken back second spot from the second of the Action Express entries with Christian Fittipaldi at the wheel.

The Mustang Sampling Action Express car, in which Fittipaldi is joined by Joao Barbosa and Filipe Albuquerque, had led for the much of the race.

Fittipaldi subsequently lost out to Castroneves in the wet conditions, before briefly moving back ahead of the three-time Indy 500 winner as the leaders pitted to change back to slick tyres.

The Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac was running fourth in the hands of Jordan Taylor, 18s down on Fittipaldi.

He had been running second before the rain, but dropped back after making two pitstops in quick succession, the first as a result of a right-rear puncture and the second to change to wet tyres.

The second Penske entry was running fifth, just over 40s behind the race leader, in the hands of Dane Cameron.

Lando Norris held sixth in the United Autosports Ligier-Gibson JSP217 he shares with Alonso and Phil Hanson.

Norris had moved up to fourth in the rain and then briefly led shortly before the race hit six hours when the cars ahead of him made their stops.

The best of the Extreme Speed Motorsports Onroak Nissan DPi with Oliver Pla driving and Lance Stroll in the #37 Jota-run Jackie Chan DCR ORECA-Gibson 07 were the last cars on the lead lap.

Mazda endured a disastrous start to its first race together with the German Joest team.

Its pair of RT24-P DPis based on the Riley/Multimatic chassis suffered multiple problems, its two cars running in 25th and 30th positions at six hours.

Ford had just returned to the top of the GT Le Mans class leaderboard after dominating the class for the first quarter of the race.

Sebastien Bourdais held the top spot in the Ganassi Ford GT that had led for most of the way, with the second car in the hands of Scott Dixon eight seconds down.

Patrick Pilet had moved into the lead in his factory CORE-run Porsche 911 RSR after remaining on slick tyres during the rain, before coming into the pits to make a scheduled stop on six hours.

The German Land Motorsport team held the top spot in GT Daytona with Kelvin van der Linde aboard its Audi R8 LMS.

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