Halfway through the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, Acura has taken over the top spot as Felipe Albuquerque leads the way in the #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 DPi.
The deep overnight hours began with Kamui Kobayashi putting on a clinic and driving away from the rest of the field in his #48 Ally Cadillac Racing DPi-V.R. The brightly-colored pink and purple Ally car remained at the front for a good while, until a full-course caution brought the field together.
That caution was caused by the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3.R and the #5 Mustang Sampling Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R coming together into turn 1. The collision sent the #5 behind the wall for repairs, and it did not return until it was 46 laps behind the leaders.
Now with 12 hours in the books, it is the #10 Acura that holds a narrow overall lead over a trio of hungry Cadillac DPi prototypes.
In LMP2, Roberto Lacorte leads in his #47 Cetilar Racing Dallara P217 Gibson by 25 seconds over the front-running #8 Tower Motorsport ORECA 07 Gibson, the only two cars still on the lead lap.
The #52 Mathaisen Motorsports entry suffered a starter motor failure in the ninth hour after leading the first parts of the race. The team had to bring the car to the garage for lengthy repairs, bringing their hopes of a strong finish to an end.
GTLM looks a lot like it did earlier in the night, with the pair of Corvettes leading the way. Currently it’s Nick Tandy in the #4 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R ahead of the Jordan Taylor in the #3 sister machine and the #24 Team RLL BMW M8 GTE not far behind.
LMP3 has a shuffled running order almost exclusively due to the efforts of Oliver Askew in the #74 Riley Motorsports Ligier JS P320 VK. The 24-year-old Floridian put in laps that were consistently a full second quicker than the competition, and pulled his team onto the lead lap and then into a position to take the lead in class.
Currently the #74 sits three laps ahead of Kenton Koch in the #6 Muehlner Motorsports Duqueine D08 VK and Wayne Boyd in the #33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P320 VK, who sit second and third respectively.
The #57 Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo currently sits in the lead of GTD, 25 seconds ahead of the #21 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo.
There is still half of the race yet to go, and plenty more action to be served up from Daytona Beach, Florida.
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