Cadillac starts from pole position at the 62nd 24 Hours of Daytona – Porsche and Caddy dominate the action – New IMSA GT3 record by Porsche
All track records at the Daytona International Speedway with infield have been broken in qualifying for the 2024 24 Hours of Daytona. Both the official and unofficial track records were eclipsed by the reigning IMSA SportsCar Championship champion, Luis Felipe “Pipo” Derani, in the Action Express Cadillac 31 (Derani/Aitken/Blomqvist)
In 1:32.656 minutes, the Brazilian beat the official track record of 1:33.685 minutes set by Oliver Jarvis in the Mazda RT24-P in 2019 by more than a second. The fastest lap ever recorded by Olivier Pla from 2020, also in the DPi-Mazda, of 1:33.324 minutes was also beaten by several LMDh cars in the GTP class.
Connor de Phillippi in the RLL-BMW 7 Penske-Porsche (Cameron/Nasr/Newgarden/Campbell; 3rd GTP), all of whom advanced into the as yet unexplored 32-lap range up to this qualifying session.
Only the two Acura ARX-06s from Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport made it onto the third row of the grid, which are probably complaining about the high payload, as they are 42 kilograms heavier than last year
Fifth LMP2 pole in a row for Keating
The real purpose of the “Roar before the 24” pre-test is to prepare for the race. A total of five sessions were run over three days, plus a short sixth session just for the GTP cars directly before qualifying. The 5 Proton Porsche not only missed qualifying, but also parts of the first session on Friday, as the Porsche 963 was only completed during this session
No commentary? No problem IMSA pic.twitter.com/Yxv9DQ9ePm
– Aidan (@aidann__w) January 21, 2024
In the LMP2 class, the amateurs had to qualify and so the stage was set for another show from Ben Keating. He secured his fifth Daytona pole in a row in the United Autosports Oreca 52 (Smiechowski/Novalak/Dillmann/Boulle; 2nd LMP2) was also strong, coming within 0.108 seconds of Keating’s time. All the other LMP2 cars were already three-quarters of a second off the fastest time in practice
Accident in GT qualifying
The GT session had to be interrupted for twelve minutes immediately after the start because David Brule had put the 12 Lexus started behind all the GTD Pro cars
Bizzare situation with Kellymoss. IMSA IMSApl Roar24 pic.twitter.com/uf3TRvqQsn
– Jędrzej Bocian IMSApl (@JBocianIMSA) January 21, 2024
Klaus Bachler, who has to complete a tight program of seven races in a row this winter, put the MDK Porsche 86 (Li/Fjordbach/Bachler/ten Voorde) in second place in the GTD class.
After last year’s BoP debacle, the Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) is now definitely competitive. Four other Porsches took part in the free practice sessions. They were equipped with cameras for filming a new Formula 1 movie by Brad Pitt.
The two new GT3s from Corvette and Ford were in different shapes. While the best Corvette Z06 GT3.R set the ninth-fastest time overall and the third-fastest in GTD Pro, the best Ford Mustang GT3 was only 23rd (P9 GTD Pro).
But not everything went to plan for Corvette either, as both works cars struggled with electronics problems in practice, which were only resolved after an engine change.
Pfaff Motorsports experienced a scary moment on the journey to Daytona. Large parts of the USA are currently being hit by a cold snap with temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius. As a result, the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo froze and suffered cold damage to the radiators. The damage was repairable, but the team then forgot to remove a blocker from the radiators, which led to delays.
Sheldon van der Linde, Maximilian Götz, Luca Stolz, Adam Christodoulou and Jens Klingmann were also affected by the winter. They arrived late at Daytona because flight operations at Frankfurt Airport had been suspended on Wednesday due to freezing rain.
Qualifying marked the end of the pre-test, with regular practice starting on Thursday, January 25th