The first round of the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will kick off a sensational 62nd edition of the 24 Hours of Daytona, as Motorsport Week previews the key talking points across the four classes.
While the WEC on the other side of the Atlantic is undergoing huge changes, IMSA remains much the same as in 2023.
The same tracks, the same teams (mostly), and the same manufacturers, with some new ones added to boot.
As always, the season will start at Daytona with the traditional Daytona 24 Hours, and end at Road Atlanta, the site of Petit Le Mans. In-between, there’ll be nine races taking place across the United States, at street tracks, classic road courses, and ‘rovals’.
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GTP
At Daytona there will be 10 cars competing in the headline GTP class, one more than there was in 2023.
The big absence, though, is Meyer-Shank Racing. After the fallout from the tyre pressure scandal last year – and Acura essentially dobbing the team in to IMSA – it’s understandable that there may have been some difficulty working together again in 2024.
However, the team also wasn’t able to find another partner, either factory or customer, and so last year’s Daytona winners won’t return to defend their crown.
In their place, the Wayne Taylor Racing team – now WTR Andretti – have upgraded their effort to two Acura ARX-06s.
The ’original’ blue and black #10 car, with Filipe Albuquerque, Ricky Taylor, Brendon Hartley and Marcus Ericsson for Daytona, will be joined by a new red and black car, driven by Louis Deletraz, the returning Jordan Taylor, Colton Herta, and Jenson Button.
The Porsche and BMW factory operations remain much the same as last year, minus some driver changes.
Matt Campbell, who was in the #5 Porsche last year, has swapped with Dane Cameron, who was in the #7 Porsche last year in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
However, Cameron will be in the car for Daytona, alongside full-time drivers Nasr and Campbell.
The three will be joined by IndyCar star Josef Newgarden, who drove for Porsche at the season-ending Petit Le Mans last year.
Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet remain in the #6 Porsche, accompanied by WEC Porsche drivers Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor.
On the BMW side of things, Augusto Farfus has been replaced in the full-time seat by Jesse Krohn, with Farfus now acting as the endurance driver in the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8. The #25 will be crewed at Daytona by Connor de Phillippi, Nick Yelloly, Maxime Martin, and Rene Rast. Finally, Cadillac.
Like BMW and Porsche, the American manufacturer retains much of their same operation from last year. Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande remain the full season drivers in the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing-run car, joined by CGR IndyCar drivers Scott Dixon and current IndyCar champion Alex Palou.
The #31’s lineup is also similar to last year, with Pipo Derani staying and Jack Aitken being upgraded from endurance driver to full-time, in the wake of Alexander Sims switching to GT cars with Corvette. Replacing Sims will be Tom Blomqvist at the reigning GTP champions.
There are also the two customer cars, both Porsches, from Proton Competition and JDC-Miller Motorsports.
The Proton car, handsomely liveried in Mustang Sampling colours, will be crewed by Gianmaria Bruni, Neel Jani, Alessio Picariello, and Romain Dumas, while the #85 JDC Miller car will have Richard Westbrook, Phil Hanson, Tijmen van der Helm, and – intriguingly – Ben Keating at the wheel.
So, prediction time. It’s very tough to call this race, with four manufacturers and six teams competing. Porsche struggled with reliability last year, as did BMW, so it will be interesting to see if either have made improvements or changes over the winter. Cadillac and Acura are known quantities but with 10 cars in the class, it’s anyone’s race.
And, like it or not, with IMSA’s ‘liberal’ use of cautions and safety cars, it could come down to the last half hour.
Going forward, the big news is the debut of Lamborghini in the top class at Sebring, with drivers Romain Grosjean, Matteo Cairoli, and Andrea Caldarelli.
The car, as you may expect, looks great in its bright green livery, and is based on the Ligier LMP2 chassis, which no other manufacturer has opted for.
While it’s unfortunate the Italian manufacturer will only run in the Endurance Cup races, it will be very interesting to see how they get on.
LMP2
LMP2 is set for its biggest year in IMSA for many years. The class will see 13 cars competing, with additions including United Autosports and Inter Europol Competition.
This is mainly because of the removal of the LMP2 class from WEC, necessitating the aforementioned teams, both of whom did not, or didn’t want to, find space in either Hypercar in WEC or GTP in IMSA.
There’s also the returning IMSA regulars – among them Riley, TDS Racing, High Class Racing, Tower Motorsports, Era Motorsports, CrowdStrike by APR, and AO Racing, plus teams known globally for excellence, including AF Corse and DragonSpeed.
There’s also Sean Creech Motorsport, running the only non-Oreca in the field, a Ligier JS P217. Watching their progress will be one of the stories of the race, no doubt.
Much like in GTP, it feels like anyone could win this race. The United Autosports cars, especially one with Ben Keating at the wheel – he’s pulling double duty, in both the #85 JDC Miller Porsche and #2 United Autosports – will be strong, as will the AO Racing car, with its purple dinosaur livery, named Spike, with PJ Hyett, Paul-Loup Chatin, Matthew Brabham and Alex Quinn at the wheel.
That ‘anyone could win’ feeling increases when you realise last year’s LMP2 winners, Proton Competition, no longer compete in LMP2 as they’ve moved up to GTP.
The only driver who raced for that team and is back in LMP2 this year is James Allen. This year the Australian is racing for DragonSpeed, in the #81 Oreca 07-Gibson, alongside Eric Lux, IndyCar rookie Kyffin Simpson, and young Mexican Sebastian Alvarez.
The car that finished second in LMP2 last year has returned: the Crowdstrike by APR car, with CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, Colin Braun, Toby Sowery, and young Dane – and Peugeot WEC reserve driver – Malthe Jakobsen getting behind the wheel during the race.
As long as the four can keep it clean and their Oreca 07-Gibson is reliable, they will surely be up there in the last couple of hours. But really, it’s anyone’s race, as is often the case in modern LMP2, where it’s less of an endurance race and more of a 24-hour sprint.
GTD Pro
This class also sees 13 cars on the entry list for Daytona – 3 more than last year.
While in 2023, the big news was the new Porsche and Ferrari cars, this year sees two iconic American manufacturers enter the class officially with brand new cars.
Ford has brought along its brand-new Mustang GT3, while Chevrolet is entering its long-awaited Corvette Z06 GT3.R, its first—ever global GT3. Both are entering two cars each, with the Corvettes run by Pratt Miller, who ran the previous guise of Corvette Racing, while the Fords will be run as a factory-supported operation by long-time partner Multimatic.
Both have stellar driver line-ups as you’d expect. The Corvettes have Antonio Garcia, Alexander Sims, and General Motors newbie Daniel Juncadella in #3, and Tommy Milner, Nicky Catsburg, and Earl Bamber in the sister #4.
Meanwhile, the Fords, #64 and #65, have Mike Rockenfeller, Harry Tincknell, and Audi alum Christopher Mies in the former, and Joey Hand, Dirk Muller, and Frederic Vervisch, another Audi alum, in the latter. So, stacked lineups.
Competing against them are factory-supported Lamborghinis, run by Iron Lynx, and a host of cars from AO Racing, with a Porsche 911 GT3.R, Pfaff Motorsports, now partnered with McLaren and running a 720S GT3 Evo, Heart of Racing, with an Aston Martin Vantage GT3, Vasser Sullivan, with a Lexus RC F GT3, Paul Miller Racing, running a BMW M4 GT3, SunEnergy1 Racing with a Mercedes-AMG GT3, and finally Risi Competizione in – you guessed it – a Ferrari 296 GT3.
There are some world class drivers in these cars, too.
Vasser Sullivan has Toyota WEC’s Mike Conway, Pfaff will have 2016 Indy 500 winner Alexander Rossi, Le Mans 2023 winner Alessandro Pier Guidi at Risi, Grosjean at Iron Lynx Lamborghini, Jules Gounon in the SunEnergy1 Mercedes, and DTM 2022 champion Sheldon van der Linde in the Paul Miller BMW.
As seems to be a running theme this year, calling this class is an impossible task.
Every single car has at least one talking point, be that driver line-up, team, the car itself… making any kind of prediction feels like you’d be doing a disservice to the other teams and drivers in the class.
Like GTP and LMP2, last year’s winners, WeatherTech Racing, have not returned. Although technically they were beaten by the GTD-entered Heart of Racing Aston Martin last year in the overall results, they still won the class – and their absence throws an already wide open race even wider still.
GTD
As usual, the GTD class is the largest class at this year’s Daytona 24 Hours, with 27 entries across 10 manufacturers: Acura, Aston Martin, BMW, Chevrolet Corvette, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lexus, Mercedes-AMG, McLaren, and Porsche.
As ever, predicting anything in this class is like predicting what a popular cryptocurrency will do on any given day. With so many cars, so many manufacturers and so many entries, you’ve got no chance.
Last year’s class winners, the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3, have returned to defend their crown – the only team to do so in 2024. There’s one change to the driver lineup, with Zacharie Robichon replacing Darren Turner, but team owner Ian James, Marco Sorensen, and Roman de Angelis remain.
As is common with a pro-am class, the winners will likely be decided by the strength of each team’s amateur drivers.
With smart strategising and quick work in the pits, you can sometimes gain large chunks of time on your rivals, giving you a substantial head start… until the next caution and safety car period, that is.
Still, as with the other classes in this and almost every other modern endurance race, this will likely evolve into a 24-hour sprint, with a team’s ringer getting in at the end in an attempt to win America’s biggest sportscar prize.
