2016 Rolex 24 At Daytona

The new season of the recently-renamed IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship kicks off with a race that begins on Saturday (and ends on Sunday); the 24 Hours of Daytona. This year's running will be the 54th edition of the event, and has an entry list of 54 cars.

With the addition of Lamborghini and Lexus, the return of the Ford GT, and a great level of competition within all four classes, this year's race has been especially anticipated by many, and it will hopefully, for positive reasons, become one to remember!

The overall winning car of last year's race, the #02 Daytona Prototype for Chip Ganassi Racing, returns with the same lineup of defending Verizon IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Kyle Larson, and Jamie McMurray. Car #01 also returns, but with an entirely new lineup of drivers consisting of Formula 3 racer Lance Stroll, two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Alex Wurz, BTCC racer Andy Priaulx, and defending FIA World Endurance Championship co-champion Brendon Hartley. As mentioned above, Ganassi is also fielding a pair of Ford GT's in the GT Le Mans class, and will be doing so for the entire season.

Here is the official spotter guide for the race, as well as the companion event for the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge.

http://www.imsa.com/sites/default/files/spotter_guides/2016_IWSC_Rolex24_SpottersGuide_v2.pdf

For people that are interested, Magnus Racing will be doing their yearly stream as confirmed by this video



link to their stream will be here http://www.ustream.tv/liveatdaytona

It'll start at 2pm eastern

Lambo and GT is a personal hype point for me, let's see how it goes.

Kenny Habul and Boris Said are driving the same Next-Gen R8 LMS. Get hyped.

Oh and Tristan Vautier and Dion von Moltke drives that car too, I guess.

RealRacingRoots wrote:Kenny Habul and Boris Said are driving the same Next-Gen R8 LMS. Get hyped.

Oh and Tristan Vautier and Dion von Moltke drives that car too, I guess.

Kenny Habul might set a world record for the amount of signs smashed into... I mean he's got 24 hours to do it.

BR's on the field (because some are likable, okay):

- Rubens Barrichello will be running with the problem children (Wayne Taylor Racing).
- Luis Derani (WEC driver that I haven't seen since A1 GP was a thing) will be running the Tequila Patrón ESM car.
- Christian Fittipaldi (yes, the bad Fittipaldi, whose short track ability is worse than his 12 year old brother that runs Bandoleros at Charlotte and his 14 year old brother that won the NASCAR Track Championship in Hickory and then moved to Formula 3 because he has suicidal tendencies)
- Oz Negri Jr. is in his usual place at Michael Shank.
- Tony "Huge Nose" Kanaan is in the Ganassi #02

- Augusto Farfus (the best driver Brazil ever had in DTM and WTCC) will run in the GTLM category with BMW RLL, sharing the car with Bill Auberlen, Bruno Spengler and Dirk Werner.
- The final brazilian on the grid is the son of three time Stock car Brasil Champion Chico Serra, Daniel Serra. He is running for Scuderia Corsa, to fill the quota of pay drivers, however, he is a good paydriver.

I'm cheering for the Larson/McMurray/Dixon/Kannan team.

That and the Corvettes in GTLM and of course, the 93 team

Qualifying for the race concluded with some very interesting results, as the session was held during heavy rainfall. No rain is expected for the upcoming weekend, however. Six cars never took to the track, and the #02 (being driven by Scott Dixon) had a particularly difficult time...





The #911 car of Patrick Pilet (co-drivers; Nick Tandy and Kévin Estre) was the fastest overall, with its fellow factory Porsche, the #912, ranked second. The top seven times were set by cars were from the GTLM category. The #20 BAR1 Motorsports car was the fastest PC car, the #37 SMP Racing Nissan was the fastest DP car (and will therefore lead the field to the green flag on Saturday), and the #73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche was the fastest GTD car. Those three cars, respectively, ranked eighth, ninth, and tenth, overall.

Full qualifying results can be found here (the #72 Ferrari in GTD, the teammate of the DP #37 which will start from the pole, is noted as having caused a red flag, but I have not been able to find the reason as to exactly what occurred):

http://www.imsa.com/sites/default/files/race_result_files/2016_IWSC_Daytona_Qualifying.pdf

Not a fan of the Prototypes automatically get the front. You get beat in qualifying? Too bad deal with it.

I'm hyped for GT Daytona so much

The final practice session of the week ended with the DeltaWing (which didn't even hit the track in qualifying) setting the fastest overall time. Similarly to the Roar Before the 24, the #60 Michael Shank Racing Honda was the fastest non-DeltaWing DP car.

The fastest cars (for PC, GTLM, and GTD, respectively) were the #52 for PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, the #25 BMW for Team RLL (just ahead of the other RLL entry; the #100), and the class-pole-winning #73 Porsche for Park Place Motorsports.

The green flag waves tomorrow afternoon when the clock strikes 3:00!

All 54 of the GT cars were accused of sandbagging during the Roar Before the 24, according to data gathered by the series. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens during the race and whether these accusations have any merit.

IMSA is a f****** joke

CAR IS STOPPED ON THE TRACK! NO FULL COURSE AND OF COURSE THE DELTA WING HITS IT

Was looking forward to watching the whole IMSA season because of the first 3 hours, because it looked like they were starting to fix their main issues.

Screw this.

ROTR : The F**KING DELTA WING

I feel gutted for the Delta Wing, no excuse for waiting at least 90 seconds to throw a full-course.

It's okay, nobody cares about IMSA after this race for the rest of the year anyways.

Cynon wrote:It's okay, nobody cares about IMSA after this race for the rest of the year anyways.

What sucks is the first couple hours were making me want to give IMSA a full-season shot, now i don't think so.

The race just ended for the #100 BMW. The right-front brake disc apparently experienced a catastrophic failure in turn 1 at the fastest part of the track, and the car lost its hood, its right-front tire, and part of the front axle that broke off with the tire. Lucas Luhr was driving at the time. Team RLL brought the #25 into the pits immediately after the incident and changed its brakes.

So that takes the #100 out of the running, the #60 is the last Daytona Prototype on track, the #8 is over 30 laps behind the PC leader, and the #93 Viper is 3 laps behind the GTD leader. This has been a rather poor race so far for my favorites.

23 hours and 50 minutes complete, and the race for GTLM is coming down to the wire between the Corvettes!

No team orders, they're racing for the win!

INCREDIBLE RACE!!! Who would have thought that after 24 hours, there still could be a photo finish in GTLM!!!

MAGNUS RACING WINS AS WELL!!!!!

ESM Tequila Patrón wins overall and is the only non DP prototype running at the checkered at the P class.
Magnus Racing takes the GT Daytona victory.
GTLM is a photo finish between #3 and #4 Corvettes, #4 wins by 0.034 seconds.
And Prototype Challenge happened.

MAGNUS RACING BABY HELL YEAH!

RENE RAST YOU ARE A FUCKING BOSS!

Outstanding job to the Tequila Patrón ESM #2 team and the PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports #52 team, but what a race among the GT classes!

After 24 hours, the Magnus Racing Audi stretches its fuel to the last drop in GTD to beat a Porshe and a Dodge by less than 6 seconds. And the Corvettes in GTLM are separated by half of a car length. I was expecting excitement, but that was more than I could have hoped for!

What an incredible race!

Great race. Helluva battle in both GT classes, Great to see P2 get the victory, Awesome stuff throughout.

Also Max Angelelli was transported to local hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Aside from last night's DeltaWing crash where there was no immediate caution, this was an exciting race. Awesome to see the Corvettes battle for the win. Great win for the Patron Tequila Honda guys. Great start to the 2016 racing season.

Shout out to the Magnus Racing Audi team for reaching another Daytona crown.

So videos show that at the very minimum the PC car was stopped in the middle of the track for 73-78 seconds and considering how people didn't catch it immediately in all 3 videos i've seen....The car was probably there for 80-90 seconds.