In the GT classes, it’s the same faces with the No.79 WeatherTech Mercedes-AMG GT3 leading in GT Daytona PRO and the No.57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 leading in GT Daytona.
The No.3 Corvette C8.R, currently second, and the No.32 Team Korthoff Mercedes-AMG GT3, currently third, are both looking to join the conversation for the lead of their respective classes.

Class leaders after the 17th hour:

GTP: Renger van der Zande, No.01 Cadillac Racing V-LMDh
LMP2: Esteban Gutierrez, No.04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR ORECA 07
LMP3: Joao Barbosa, No.33 Sean Creech Motorsports Ligier JS P320
GTD PRO: Jules Gounon, No.79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3
GTD: Indy Dontje, No.57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3

Chip Ganassi Racing ran 1-2 with nine hours remaining in the Rolex 24 at Daytona following delays for the pair of Acura ARX-06s and a trip to the garage for the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-LMDh.
Sebastien Bourdais put the No. 01 Cadillac V-LMDh out front, passing the No. 6 Porsche 963 of Nick Tandy just prior to the end of the 14th hour.

Bourdais held a 0.794-second lead over the sister No. 02 CGR entry of Alex Lynn, with Tandy having dropped to third although was due a pit stop.
Drama for the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac saw Pipo Derani slow on track prior to having limped his way to the garage with left-rear suspension damage after contact with a GTD car. Derani had been running fourth at the time.

It came after both Acura GTP class entries have faced lengthened pit stops for oil flushes, due to fuel seeping into the oil systems, according to an Acura spokesperson.
The pole-sitting No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing entry, which has been the fastest car on track, made at least three oil flushes since the start of the race, including twice in the last three hours.
Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport’s Acura, meanwhile, made a brief trip to the garage in Hour 13 to fix an oil filler bracket, then performed an oil flush in pit lane with Louis Deletraz at the wheel.

The WTR Andretti entry dropped two laps behind the leading GTP entries as a result of the extra service as well as a pit lane penalty for working on the car while under a closed pit.
The Heart of Racing’s Roman De Angelis took over the GTD class lead following a hard-fought battle with the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Philip Ellis.
The two GTD entries, which ran ahead of the GTD Pro pace-setting No. 79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes of Dani Juncadella, benefitted from a drive-through penalty to the No. 32 Team Korthoff Motorsports Mercedes of Maxi Goetz for jumping the restart following the race’s seventh full course caution.

Magnus Racing’s Aston Martin Vantage GT3 also dropped down the running order due to a stop-and-hold plus 60-second penalty for running the red light at pit exit.
An accident by Hugh Plumb in the No. 64 Team TGM/TF Sport Aston Martin brought out the most recent yellow in the 14th hour, resulting in a lengthy period to retrieve the GTD Pro class entry.

The No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR Oreca 07 Gibson of Ben Hanley led LMP2, while LMP3 was topped by the No. 17 AWA Duqueine D08 Nissan of Nico Varrone.

No. 3 Corvette loses, gains back laps, positions in fast-paced middle eight hours

An up-and-down middle eight hours saw Corvette Racing re-emerge from two laps down and back into contention for a class victory as daylight approached for the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
The No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R ran third in the GT Daytona PRO (GTD PRO) class and fifth among all GTD runners after 16 hours in the season-opening race for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship

The three Corvette Racing drivers – Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Tommy Milner – each drove triple-stints as they rotated through the C8.R for the second time.
Garcia, who started the race Saturday, worked with the Corvette Racing engineers to improve tire performance through his three stints. By the time he handed over to Taylor a little before the 10-hour mark, the C8.R was in a better state than when Garcia took over, as Taylor left the pitlane in the class lead thanks to a solid stop by the Corvette pit crew.

Things began to look dire near the 10.5-hour mark when the No. 3 Corvette suffered a left-rear flat tire just before Taylor came on the Turn 1 speedway banking while running second in class. He nursed the car back to pitlane even as the tire came off the wheel before the Corvette made it back to pit entry.
The team quickly changed tires but had to stop a lap later to change the Corvette’s rear brakes due to damage from the flat tire. It dropped the No. 3 C8.R to two laps down.

Critically, Taylor was able to stay ahead of the GTD PRO leader and not lose another lap before a full-course yellow just before the halfway point of the race. The Corvette Racing crew got a lap back during a pass-around before stopping for fuel and tires, and then the crew changed the front brakes a lap later to return the Corvette to full strength – and the lead lap – with just over 11-and-a-half hours to go.

Taylor gave way to Milner from the sixth position in class about an hour later, with the Corvette rejoining in fifth. Less than an hour into his opening stint, the race’s eighth full-course caution drew Milner closer to the front. He ran third in class and seven seconds from the lead as the race entered the final eight hours.

3/3) We were able to get a wave around to get our lap back (while also sneaking in a front brake change).
Since then, we've been working our way up through the pack and now sit third as the sun starts to rise.

ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“Things are still not bad. I don’t know where the pace will become the morning time. Temperatures will be completely different. So far the pace has been good. Overall, everyone is pushing hard, I believe. I’m sure that will lead to some mistakes.
But we’re almost halfway through and let’s see. We’re still up there and that’s good. Hopefully it comes our way a little bit. But I’m not complaining. The car feels decent. We are up front, and that’s where we need to be.”

JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“Oh my gosh, leading for a while to begin with, and then we lost a tire and two laps.
The guys made some kind of crazy call timing-wise to where we could do a brake change and not lose any time.
Then we got a lucky yellow to get back on the lead lap and new front brakes too. It was a wild stint to go two laps down and then back on the lead lap to stay in contention. The car is still good and is in one piece.
The name of the game is still staying out of trouble. Hopefully we can make up a couple more spots now this morning and be in a good spot come sunrise.”

Evolution of the Corvette during the night: “The driving style feels kind of weird. I think the car in the cold doesn’t like to be pushed on too hard and leaned on too hard. I think it’s a driving style in the way our car works the tire. When the sun comes back up,
Antonio was really strong at the start of the race when it was warm, so hopefully that bodes well for us.”

19 Hours standings

20 Hours completed and C8.R now holding first place for some time

Up front, the No. 01 Chip Ganasssi Racing Cadillac continues to extend its lead over the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura two of three cars on the lead lap at the moment, the No. 02 Cadillac still in third. Scott Dixon remains at the wheel of the No. 1, while Simon Pagenaud is now in the No. 60.

GTD PRO is still a fight between Jordan Taylor in the No. 3 Corvette and Daniel Juncadella in the No. 79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes AMG. Ben Barnicoat and the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RCF remains on the same lap, but have a large gap to Juncadella.
It’s Aston Martin and Mercedes-AMG battling in GTD, the No. 27 Heart of Racing Vantage driven by Darren Turner holding the lead over Winward Racing’s No. 57 (Philip Ellis) and looking quite strong.

“The AMG is good on long pace, but it seems the Astons are a little better on new tires,” said Winward Racing driver Daniel Morad.

Class leaders after the 20th hour:

GTP: Scott Dixon, No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-LMDh

LMP2: Ben Hanley, No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing with APR ORECA

LMP3: Thomas Merrill, No 17 AWA Duqueine

GTD PRO: Jordan Taylor, No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette

GTD: Darren Turner, No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage

The lead changed in the GTD Pro class just after the restart, as Jules Gounon beat Tommy Milner into the Le Mans chicane to put the WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo ahead of the factory No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R GTD

Bummer as at least 2 times during yellows Garcia goes into first place and when green flag waves,
you blink and each time he ends up in 3rd place.

Cost, ends race in second place :-(

GTD PRO came down to a fight between the No. 79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG, the No. 3 Corvette and the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus.
Prior to the final restart, it was a flurry of position changes between the three, but in the end Maro Engel brought the WeatherTech Racing home first to claim the victory with Cooper MacNeil, Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon.
Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Tommy Milner took second for Corvette,
with Jack Hawksworth, Ben Barnicoat and Mike Conway third for Lexus.

Corvette Racing started its 25th season of competition with a runner-up class finish Sunday in the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Tommy Milner teamed up for the second-place GT Daytona (GTD) PRO result in the No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R.

After a drive back from two laps down in the middle of the night due to a flat left-rear tire and a rear brake change, the No. 3 C8.R moved back to not just contention for the Rolex victory, but to the lead just before sunrise Sunday morning.

The chaotic events of the middle eight hours looked like they would give way with a caution-free run of more than five hours into mid-morning. Taylor drove a double-stint for his final laps in the car and led the class multiple times.
At that point and with a little more than three hours to go, Milner took over from Taylor and drove two stints of hard, intense racing that saw the Corvette and two other competitors swap the GTD PRO lead.

Milner gave way to Garcia for an even more chaotic final one hour, 45 minutes. The top three cars – the 3 Corvette, the 14 Lexus and 79 Mercedes – swapped back and forth through three full-course caution periods in the span of an hour and 20 minutes before a final 26-minute run to the flag with Garcia coming home second in class.

An up-and-down middle eight hours saw Corvette Racing re-emerge from two laps down and back into contention for a class victory as daylight arrived Sunday. The three Corvette Racing drivers each drove triple-stints through the darkness as they rotated through the C8.R for the second time.

Garcia, who started the race Saturday, worked with the Corvette Racing engineers to improve tire performance through his three stints. By the time he handed over to Taylor a little before the 10-hour mark, the C8.R was in a better state than when Garcia took over, as Taylor left the pitlane in the class lead thanks to a solid stop by the Corvette pit crew.

Things began to look dire near the 10.5-hour mark when the No. 3 Corvette suffered a left-rear flat tire just before Taylor came on the Turn 1 speedway banking while running second in class. He nursed the car back to pitlane even as the tire came off the wheel before the Corvette made it back to pit entry.
The team quickly changed tires, but had to stop a lap later to change the Corvette’s rear brakes due to damage from the flat tire. It dropped the No. 3 C8.R to two laps down.

Teammates Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor, and Tommy Milner secured a second-place finish in the Rolex 24 at Daytona. It feels great to be back, see you all at Sebring in March!
Critically, Taylor was able to stay ahead of the GTD PRO leader and not lose another lap before a full-course yellow just before the halfway point of the race. The Corvette Racing crew got a lap back during a pass-around before stopping for fuel and tires, and then the crew changed the front brakes a lap later to return the Corvette to full strength and the lead lap with just over 11-and-a-half hours to go.

Taylor gave way to Milner from the sixth position in class about an hour later, with the Corvette rejoining in fifth. Less than an hour into his opening stint, the race’s eighth full-course caution drew Milner closer to the front. He ran third in class and seven seconds from the lead as the race entered the final eight hours.
Corvette Racing’s next event in the WeatherTech Championship is the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on Saturday, March 18.

ANTONIO GARCIA, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R FINISHED SECOND IN GTD PRO:

“P2 at Daytona it was a bit crazy out there. With the P3 cars ahead of us, it was a lottery, especially in turns One and Three.
Everybody was getting super crazy. When you have a car with ABS, you can just go for it, and that’s what people are doing. But we did all we could. That was all we had. A lot of times, I was very surprised to be where we were. We seemed to be good on fuel, which seemed to be our only chance.
We just didn’t have the outright pace.”

JORDAN TAYLOR, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R FINISHED SECOND IN GTD PRO:

“The Rolex 24 is always kind of a stand-alone race for us every year. If you look at our race as a whole, we had some adversity during the night, but came from two laps down. Everyone executed well.
We were in the hunt most of the way. We didn’t have the outright pace, but it was a true Corvette Racing race where we battled our way back to second.
We started with a third-place car and finished second, so that’s a win in our book.”

TOMMY MILNER, NO. 3 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R FINISHED SECOND IN GTD PRO:

“Based on how everything was going in practice and in the Roar, I think P2 in the end is quite good. When you have a chance to fight for the win like that and for us to run up front for so much of the race, to miss it by that much at the end is tough.

We knew going in that the Mercedes guys were quick, the Aston was quick, the Lexus was quick. It was a great job by the team to persevere and to keep pushing all throughout the race. My teammates did a great job. We were just missing a little bit of pace at the end.
It was a good race for all three of us. We were racing super-hard and pushing super-hard. Furthermore, we just came up a little short.”

Corvette Racing didn’t have the “outright pace” to win the Rolex 24 at Daytona according to drivers Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia, who, along with Tommy Milner, settled for a runner-up finish in GTD Pro.

The No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R GTD came back from a two-lap deficit to lead the race in class, totaling 201 laps up front in the around-the-clock enduro.
It came amid in a three-way battle in the closing stages that included the eventual class-winning No. 79 WeatherTech Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Maro Engel as well as Jack Hawksworth, who finished third in the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3.

The cars, mixed with the leading GTD class entries, swapped back and forth through three full-course caution periods,
although, Garcia was unable to match the pace of Engel in the final 26-minute run to the checkered flag, finishing four seconds behind.
“Based on how everything was going in practice and in the Roar, I think P2 in the end is quite good,” Milner said.

When you have a chance to fight for the win like that and for us to run up front for so much of the race, to miss it by that much at the end is tough.
We knew going in that the Mercedes guys were quick, the Aston was quick, the Lexus was quick.
It was a great job by the team to persevere and to keep pushing all throughout the race.
“My teammates did a great job. We were just missing a little bit of pace at the end. It was a good race for all three of us. We were racing super-hard and pushing super-hard. We just came up a little short.”

The Pratt Miller-run factory squad lost ground overnight after a left-rear puncture for Taylor led to a rear brake change due to the damage caused in the rear of the car, dropping them out of initial contention.
“If you look at our race as a whole, we had some adversity during the night but came from two laps down,” Taylor said. Everyone executed well.
We were in the hunt most of the way. We didn’t have the outright pace, but it was a true Corvette Racing race where we battled our way back to second.
“We started with a third-place car and finished second, so that’s a win in our book.”

Garcia, meanwhile, noted the challenges of traffic in the 61-car starting field, particularly interaction with LMP3 machinery.
“It was a bit crazy out there. With the P3 cars ahead of us, it was a lottery, especially in Turns 1 and 3,” he said. “Everybody was getting super crazy.
When you have a car with ABS, you can just go for it and that’s what people are doing.

But we did all we could. That was all we had. A lot of times, I was very surprised to be where we were.
“We seemed to be good on fuel, which seemed to be our only chance. We just didn’t have the outright pace.”
Hawksworth: Third for Vasser Sullivan Lexus Was “All She Had”

Vasser Sullivan and Lexus scored its first Rolex 24 podium finish in GTD Pro, with Hawksworth, Ben Barnicoat and Toyota Gazoo Racing driver on-loan Mike Conway combining to lead 76 laps in class.
“The Vasser Sullivan team has really been flawless,” Hawksworth said. “We had good stops, great strategy, and good reliability with our Lexus RC F GT3. The Lexus worked really well, and I think that was all she had today.

We were lacking the top speed compared to the other cars who finished ahead of us, but in the infield we were strong.
Mike and Ben drove absolutely fantastic and Vasser Sullivan guys on pit wall made all the right calls and pit stops were strong.
Just an excellent, strong race.
“I hate the opportunity to miss out, but honestly there was no way for us to have anything better than a third place today and I’m happy with that.”

Here is the last 6 hours of the race