How fog nullified Cadillac’s advantage and aided Porsche’s Daytona 24 Hours hat-trick

Porsche and Penske made it three in a row at the Daytona 24 Hours, and Felipe Nasr, too. The Brazilian sealed victory in last weekend’s IMSA SportsCar Championship curtain-raiser with Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich, his latest set of team-mates in the #7 Porsche 963 LMDh, as he became only the third driver to score a hat-trick of overall victories at the Florida enduro. The story could have been spoiled by one of two other cars, even if the smart money was on the winning Porsche Penske Motorsport entries for much of the race.

It was close at the end: this was an IMSA race at Daytona after all. Eight of the 11 GTP entries were still on the lead lap at the finish of a race interrupted by nine safety cars. One of them, starting not long after midnight, stretched for more than six hours courtesy of the fog that descended on the Daytona International Speedway.

Nasr, in the cockpit as he had been for his 2024 and '25 victories, crossed the line just a second and a half to the good after an uninterrupted period of green-flag running stretching two and a half hours from the final caution. The challenge to Porsche at the death came from Cadillac and the #31 Action Express Racing V-Series.R LMDh. Jack Aitken, who was teamed with Earl Bamber, Frederik Vesti and Connor Zilisch, made life difficult for Nasr without truly looking like he was going to snatch victory away from him.

The other genuine contender at Daytona was the sister PPM entry shared by Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell. It would almost certainly have been in the fight for victory at the end but for two glitches in pitlane over the final hours. They were ultimately restricted to fourth place aboard their battle-scarred machine, finishing just over half a minute down on the winning 963.

Porsche had the fastest car around the 3.56 miles of the Daytona roval in the race, just about. It was close, very close, between the two PPM cars and Action Express. But the protracted safety car in the hours of darkness played into its hands. Cadillac, Action Express as opposed to the two Wayne Taylor Racing that didn’t have the same pace, had the edge on tyre degradation, an advantage that was removed by the protracted safety car period during the night. It relieved the strain on the 21-set tyre allocation for qualifying and the race as it meant the teams could chuck on a fresh set of the new Michelin medium tyres at every stop once the race got going again. “Everyone was tyre rich after six-and-a-half-hours behind the safety car,” said Penske Racing president Jonathan Diuguid.

The #7 car also had the kind of race that Aitken and his team-mates could only dream of. There were no penalties for Nasr and his young team-mates, both racing a PPM 963 at Daytona for the first time, and just one hitch on the road to victory. A trip across the infield grass had removed a turning vane under the nose, which the team replaced across two stops during the long yellow.

The #31 Cadillac was hit by multiple incidents and penalties, but was still able to act as the closest contender to the #7 Porsche

Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images

Such a clean run for the #7 Porsche contrasted with that of the Action Express car. Aitken had to start from the back of the GTP field after losing pole position when his underbody plank was found to have been worn beyond the prescribed tolerances. He was then penalised for jumping the start and also had a quick off at the kink in the infield early on. “That can easily turn into something quite ugly,” he pointed out.

Worse was to come during the six-hour safety car. Zilisch ran a red light at the end of the pitlane and was penalised 60s, dropping the car off the lead lap. It wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been: the car was able to get back on terms at the next safety car.

Aitken, looking for a third straight IMSA win together with Bamber and Vesti after their victories at Indianapolis and Road Atlanta at the end of last season, had a big look down the inside of the leader into the first corner 14 laps before the chequered flag. He was happy to admit that it was a speculative move: “I was trying to be a bit creative, but it wasn’t going anywhere.” That said, Nasr still had to be somewhere between forthright and aggressive in his defence.

“We used a lot of tape, some carbon, a bit of glue, rivets, everything we had actually” PPM competition director Travis Law

The second Porsche remained in the fight until the final round of stops, which was a miracle given the damage it was carrying. Starting driver Estre had been forced wide into an unidentified LMP2 machine by a GT Daytona car leaving the pits shortly before handing over to Vanthoor for the first time.

After a couple of quick stops for immediate repairs, the team took advantage of the long safety car when the pack was lapping slowly behind the course vehicle to make good on the damage as best as it could over the course of six pitstops. “We used a lot of tape, some carbon, a bit of glue, rivets, everything we had actually,” said PPM competition director Travis Law. “The guys did an amazing job to get the car back that competitive.”

Without the safety car it would have been game over for #6, reckoned Diuguid: “I don’t think we could have made it to the end of the race without a trip back to the garage to do a major repair.”

Tapped back together, the #6 Porsche endured a suspected fuel strategy miscue to deny it better than fourth place

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images

The car remained quick for the duration of the race, as witnessed when Campbell set a fastest lap when the race went green after the interminable yellow. So quick, in fact, that Vanthoor sat at the head of the field, five or so seconds up on Andlauer, at the final yellow. The #7 car came in for a splash of fuel as soon as the pits opened, while Vanthoor stayed out before ducking in two laps later.

It was a disaster in terms of the car’s track position: Vanthoor was down in 10th when the race went green. The delay wasn’t quite the tactical error that it appeared. The engineering crew of the #6 on the pit stand didn’t hear the call from race control announcing the pits were open, the team suspecting that there was some kind of electrical glitch in pitlane. PPM wasn’t the only team to be so affected, it should be pointed out.

Any hopes the drivers had of winning this race disappeared early in the 24th hour. Vanthoor had made it back to second position and was a couple of seconds behind the sister car when a slow puncture brought him in for his final stop a couple of laps early. Estre’s pace then quickly fell off a cliff as he was having to engage in some pretty heavy fuel saving to make the finish. Third became fourth: he had nothing for Dries Vanthoor in the best of the WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDhs.

Porsche didn’t fully explain what happened. “Let’s just say that Kevin had to save a shitload of fuel,” offered Urs Kuratle, Porsche’s LMDh project manager. This one did appear to be an error on the part of PPM. Did the amount of fuel put into the car correspond to the number of laps it was planned for Estre to do rather than the two more actually required as a result of the early stop? That would be the obvious conclusion to reach.

The two factory Porsches and the Action Express Cadillac were the only cars truly in the fight at Daytona this year. BMW finished best of the rest in third position with the M Hybrid V8 LMDh driven by Dries Vanthoor, Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns and Rene Rast. It crossed the line just over 20s in arrears of the winning Porsche despite dropping two laps back at one point in the first half of the race as a result of a steering problem.

There was little in the way of disappointment in the BMW camp after its best Daytona finish with its LMDh to date. The two IMSA M Hybrids, run by WRT for the first time after it took over the programme from the Rahal team, could only qualify eighth and ninth. But WRT made a significant step forward in final free practice that put them ahead of the WTR Caddys and the Acuras in the GTP pecking order come the race.

BMW didn't have the outright pace of Porsche but found gains to take a maiden Daytona 24 Hours podium with its M Hybrids

Photo by: Art Fleischmann

“We knew we had made a step forward, the drivers had a better feeling with the car,” said WRT boss Vincent Vosse. “The driveability was better, which was helping the tyre degradation. But we had no clue that it would be such a turnaround. We couldn’t fight the Porsches, but we were in the ballpark.”

Only one car could do that last weekend, the Action Express Caddy. Some suggested that Porsche always had something in hand, but it batted that one away. “Felipe will tell you that he left nothing in the car in that battle with Aitken at the end,” insisted Diuguid. “It was a nail-biter to the flag.”

Nasr backed that up: he reckoned this was the most nerve-wracking climax to this three GTP victories. “A couple of times I had to pick my line and brake as late as I could, and I could see he [Aitken] was trying everything he could. They were not going to let us win that easy. I left it all out on track, every ounce of strength and, above all, my heart.”