BMW’s Dries Vanthoor has taken pole for the 2025 Daytona 24 Hours, with the other BMW, driven by Sheldon van der Linde causing a red flag by stopping on track with a technical issue.
D. Vanthoor, onboard the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8, set a 1:33.895 in the dying seconds of the 15 minute qualifying session for the GTP cars. He was 0.291 faster than Meyer Shank Acura’s Nick Yelloly, with Porsche’s Felipe Nasr.
The session began with drivers exiting the pits on metaphorical tip toes, with no tyre warmers in IMSA and unusually cold temperatures in Florida meaning everyone needed to take extreme caution on the first couple of laps, until the tyres had heat in them.
However, the session had barely got going before D. Vanthoor’s teammate, S. van der Linde in the sister #25 BMW, stopped on track at turn 6.
Marshals and safety crew soon recovered the car and towed it back to the pits, but the German-built machine would take no further part in qualifying.
Vanthoor comes out on top
Once the session got under way again, the race was on to set a competitive time with only a few minutes left. Nasr, driving the #7 Porsche 963, set the first competitive time, a 1:38.477, but Mirko Bortolotti, in the #63 Lamborghini SC63 beat it by over two seconds.
The Italian wasn’t top for long though. A flurry of times soon came in, culminating in Tom Blomqvist, in the #60 Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06, fastest as the chequered flag waved, with D. Vanthoor second, Gianmaria Bruni third, Nasr fourth, Felipe Albuquerque fifth, and Bortolotti sixth.
But the session wasn’t over, as these drivers crossed the line before the time expired, meaning they’d get another lap. Blomqvist was approaching Bortolotti, with the two going onto the banking nose to tail. Bortolotti went high and Blomqvist tried to get in under neath him, when the Italian moved down and almost made contact with Blomqvist’s Acura. They raced side by side, just inches apart, down the back stretch towards the chicane, with Blomqvist outbraking his rival but having had his lap ruined in the process.
But, D. Vanthoor, Yelloly and Nasr came through setting faster laps to take the podium positions and prime starting spots for the 24 hour race tomorrow.
Four manufacturers in top 4
In fourth was the #31 Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R of Jack Aitken, 0.455 off D. Vanthoor. That makes it four manufacturers in the top 4 starting positions, showing the diversity of competitiveness of the IMSA Sportscar Championship this year.
Fifth was Gianmaria Bruni in the #85 JDC Miller Motorsports Porsche 963, with Blomqvist sixth, unable to set a faster lap after his altercation with Bortolotti. The two Wayne Taylor-run Cadillacs were seventh and eighth, Albuquerque in the #10 followed by Deletraz in the #40, while Bortolotti was ninth and Matt Campbell tenth in the #6 Porsche 963.
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