What makes the Daytona 24 Hours so special

It seems like only yesterday. Thirty years ago this month I boarded a plane for what was only my second visit to the good ol’ US of A. Destination: Orlando, Florida, and a quick drive up Interstate 4 to the self-styled World Center of Racing, the Daytona International Speedway. Back in 1996 I made my maiden visit to the Daytona 24 Hours, and little could I have imagined that it would kick off my racing season just about every year hence deep into the century that was to follow.

This will be my 29th Daytona, these days the opening round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship. It was the curtain-raiser for the ‘old’ IMSA GT Championship back in ’96 - and various things in between times. I’ve had the misfortune to miss a couple along the way, so I wasn’t feeling inclined to celebrate the 30-year anniversary.

But while doing the maths — or should that be math? - I stumbled on a significant number. A quick tot up of all the 24-hour races on which I have reported got me to 89, so ergo, Daytona this year will be my 90th! That is worth marking.

The large majority of my attendances at twice-around-the-clock enduros have come at the Le Mans 24 Hours and Daytona. (The Spa 24 Hours is some way behind in third place on my list.) Which brings me back to my first time at Daytona and the hope it instilled in me as a fan of endurance racing since I was a kid.

The very first sportscar race I attended was the 1981 Brands Hatch 1000Km. It was the final round of that year’s World Sportscar Championship, and guess which was the first? It was the Daytona 24 Hours, the last time the race featured on the world series schedule. Sportscar racing either side of the Pond continued to diverge in the years that followed, which is why in my bright-eyed youth I was so excited about what was happening in my world circa ’96.

Think about it, the Ferrari 333SP, which had been doing much the winning in IMSA in the two years before my Daytona debut, had been built specifically for North American sportscar racing. But it had already raced at Le Mans - albeit briefly - and by that spring I would be touting the Prancing Horse as one of the favourites for victory at the French enduro. I had no choice given that two of the beautiful - to the eye and the ear - Italian machines topped the times at the April pre-qualifying day. With the same driver! Eric van de Poele did the quick laps in each of the two 333s entered by Team Scandia.

Taylor, Sharp and Pace shared victorious Riley & Scott MkIII on Watkins’s first Daytona visit

Photo by: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images

Things didn’t go the way of Ferrari and Scandia come the race, nor did Doyle Racing have a good one. The operation put together by Wayne Taylor, then as a driver just as much the mover and shaker he is today, wasn’t really a factor with its Oldsmobile-engined Riley & Scott MkIII.

It was a great story, though. Taylor, Scott Sharp and Jim Pace won at Daytona on my first visit, ahead of Gianpiero Moretti’s Ferrari. Remember the spirited late-race charge from Max Papis in the 333? Doyle Racing, run by the R&S works, followed it up with victory six weeks later at the Sebring 12 Hours (coincidently with de Poele in place of the otherwise engaged Sharp) and then made, in the days when you could, a late entry for Le Mans. As audacious and opportune as it was, Taylor’s bid to complete the unofficial triple crown of endurance ultimately proved fruitless.

That was the year Joest Racing took the first of its back-to-back victories at the big one with the Porsche WSC95, which was conceived for IMSA and its World Sports Car class just like the Ferrari and R&S. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest at Le Mans had opened up its race to WSC machinery in 1994 and the IMSA rulebook became the basis of what was dubbed LMP1 for 1998.

Why shouldn’t I dream about Ferrari going for gold on the high banks of the DIS with the 449P or perhaps its successor?

No one used the word convergence back then, but it really did seem that the disparate worlds of European and North American sportscar racing were coming together. More so when Don Panoz, who’d bought IMSA after its previous owners had unwisely changed the brand name to Professional Sports Car Racing, aligned himself with the ACO and launched the American Le Mans Series for 1999.

That process didn’t pan out as I’d hoped and perhaps expected. It wasn’t until 2023 that everything finally came together and I got to witness the same cars - or at least some of them - duking it out at the front of the pack at both Daytona and Le Mans. That was the real start of what we keep on calling a golden era of prototype racing.

Sometimes I’ve been critical of Daytona as a race, most notably when it has climaxed after a last-gasp safety car: the one-lap sprint to the flag of 2011 always springs to mind. Thankfully the cynical cautions of old are a thing of the past.

Daytona has an atmosphere all of its own that sets it apart from Le Mans

Photo by: Porsche Motorsport

Perhaps what I like about the event the most is the fact that it is just so different to Le Mans. That’s the style of racing, the venue, the atmosphere and the sheer number of cars on a circuit measuring not much more than 40% of its French equivalent.

If those were reasons enough to keep going back, then I need to add that stuff about the same cars being present in America and France, which actually applies to each category of car on the grid at Daytona and Le Mans. There are even some of the same teams going for “the overall” as the Americans like to say in IMSA and the World Endurance Championship.

I’m not holding out hope that one day Daytona will be the opening round of the new WEC like it was with the old world championship back in ’81. There are surely too many hurdles to clear for that to happen. But why shouldn’t I dream about Ferrari going for gold on the high banks of the DIS with the 449P or perhaps its successor? Just like the 333SP did 30 years ago.