Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Josef Newgarden and Dane Cameron, drivers of the #7 Porsche 963, have won the Daytona 24 Hours, with Nasr crossing the line to win the race. It was a hard fought race with Cadillac, but the German manufacturer prevailed to take the victory, just four tenths between the Nasr and Blomqvist, in second driving the #31 Cadillac V-Series.R.
The race has been dominated by a titanic struggle between the Porsche and Cadillac factory teams. Porsche have struggled in the heat, both on Saturday early on in the race and on Sunday in the closing stage, with Felipe Nasr saying as much in a mid-race press conference after he’d finished a stint, answering a question from MotorsportWeek.com.
“In the heat of the day, [Cadillac] seems to have an advantage, especially under braking and traction,” said the Brazilian. “They seem to handle better in those two areas. They have the upper hand now, but ask me in a few hours and we might have a different answer.”
However, going into the night hours and Nasr’s prediction was correct. The Porsches found pace and balance as the track cooled, helping them move towards the front and truly fight the Cadillacs for the overall lead.
With the #01 Cadillac V-Series.R encountering technical issues — a “mechanical powertrain problem” according to Cadillac — the American manufacturer only had the one bullet in the gun left, the red Action Express car.
However, its drivers took the fight to Porsche, leading for much of the darkness hours. As the night time receded into the day light, the Porsches began to show their true-pace on a still-cool track with Mathieu Jaminet closing down a gap to Pipo Derani. However, try as the Frenchman might, he could not find a way past the Brazilian.
At the same time, Matt Campbell in the sister #6 Porsche 963 was catching both of them. The Kiwi was closing the gap at a rate of knots, eventually running line astern, making the lead group three cars instead of two, increasing the pressure on Derani.
At that point, the pitstop cycle started. Derani and Jaminet both pitted at the same time, with fast pit work by Porsche Penske’s pitcrew enabling Jaminet to come out ahead of the Cadillac, now driven by Jack Aitken.
Campbell, though, had not pitted. When he did a lap or two later, more stupendous Penske pit work, plus a good in lap from the Kiwi, enabled him to come out ahead of Jaminet, leapfrogging both.
Cold tyres though meant he was soon overtaken by both Jaminet, now leading, and Aitken in second.
But then, disaster: Jaminet’s #6 Porsche had overused its amount of usable energy and so received a penalty — its third of the race for the same offence.
This dropped Jaminet back almost a minute behind Aitken, the new leader, and Cambell, a second or so back.
Campbell was now putting Aitken under an immense amount of pressure. Both were darting this way and that, with Aitken pushing Campbell off onto the oval apron at one point, in an attempt to defend the lead.
However, eventually Campbell used his immense amount of skill to box Aitken behind a GTD car at the entrance to turn 1. The Kiwi then swept past on the outside to take the lead off the Cadillac driver.
Meanwhile, Jaminet was still making his way through the field. He almost immediately passed Louis Deletraz in the #40 WTRAndretti Acura ARX-06 for fourth position, then began gapping the Swiss driver and set about catching Neel Jani in the #5 Proton Competition Porsche 911 GT3.R.
Back with the leaders and Campbell pitted, handing the car over to teammate Felipe Nasr. Nasr proceeded to lengthen the gap Campbell had began to build, getting it up to 15 seconds.
However, a full course caution was called as the engine cover from the beleaguered #3 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P217, eliminating the gap Cambpell and Nasr had built.
Back under green and Nasr began to build the gap to Aitken again, with Cambpell replacing Nasr after a double stint from the Brazilian. Similarly, Aitken pitted his Cadillac and handed over to the rapid Tom Blomqvist, who immediately set about closing the gap to Nasr.
The gap kept coming down between the two leaders, with them both simultaneously growing the gap to Deletraz in third.
Blomqvist got this down totwo and half seconds with just under an hour to go. However, the race hadn’t finished serving out its drama quite yet: the #12 Lexus RC F GT3 of Parker Thompson caught fire exciting the pits, bringing out a caution while the car was extinguished and the pit lane exit cleared.
Back under green and Blomqvist and Nasr steamed off from Deletraz and Jaminet behind them, as Jaminet got a hip check from the third-placed Deletraz, sending him briefly off track and ending his challenge for the win.
However, try as he might he could not find his way past Nasr’s Porsche. The gap remained constant and Nasr, employing aggressive defending to stay ahead and visibly pushing his Porsche 963 as hard as he could, occasionally risking losing the car under braking or getting on power.
Despite some confusion about when the race finished — the chequered flag may have been waved early as the race technically started a couple of minutes late — Nasr crossed the laine to win, 0.402 ahead of Blomqvist and Deletraz in the Acura 2.3 seconds behind Nasr.
Jaminet was fourth in the sister Porsche, with Gianmaria Brun wasi fifth in the #5 Proton Porsche. Richard Westbrook crossed the line sixth in the #85 JDC Miller Porsche, while the two BMWs, driven by Nick Yelloly in the #25 BMW M Hybrid V8 with his co-drivers Conor de Phillippi, Maxime Martin and Rene Rast, and Jesse Krohn in the #24, along with his co-drivers Philipp Eng, Augusto Farfus, and Dries Vanthoor.
