The fight for the overall lead between the Cadillac's continues, and the GT Le Mans battle is hot and heavy as we watch Matt Campbell being hotly pursued by the #3 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R in the hands of Antonio Garcia, the rapid Spaniard, who is a former overall winner of this race, when he did so in 2009, driving for Brumos Porsche. The three Cadillac's are in this order. Renger van der Zande has a 36 second margin over Mike Conway at the wheel of the #31 Whelen Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R. The Flying Dutchman, van der Zande, has completed 523 laps, 1,862 miles. Then comes the #5 Cadillac of Sebastien Bourdais. Then it's the Mazda's of Oliver Jarvis and Jonathan Bomarito. Dane Cameron is next in line in the sole remaining Acura, and then comes Mattheus Leist. The #7 Acura is actually still in the motor race, with Ricky Taylor at the controls. He's run 500 laps, 1,780 miles. However, he is 25 laps down to the leaders.
Simon Trummer leads LMP2 for PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, over Ben Hanley in the #81 DragonSpeed car, followed by Ryan Lewis in the #18 Era Motorsport Oreca LMP2 machine. All of the LMP2 cars are French Oreca built chassis'. Don Yount is still running in the #38 Performance Tech Oreca. Race Control has done very well to keep this race green. Both Mazda's have made pit stops as we speak. The Mazda's are in position to have a much better finish than they've had here at Daytona before. With that said, in bygone eras of this race, Mazda cars have done well when they ran in classes like GTP, GTO, GTU, and World Sports Car, back in the 1980s and '90s.
The LMP2 field is really close, with just 43 and a half seconds between the top two. The #74 Riley Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3 is now seventh in class in GT Daytona. Oliver Jarvis and Jonathan Bomarito run fourth and fifth overall. Renger van der Zande clocks in a 1:35.9, a second quicker than anyone else in the DPi field at the moment and only a second away from the best lap that car has turned in the race. Traffic pushes him to a 1:36.5. We've run 526 laps. The predicted lap number total at the end is 837 which would break the record of 808 laps. Don't try to do the fractions on this one. It's early Sunday morning. Yours truly is still half asleep in the bed in the hotel, and no, I can't do fractions whatsoever. It's a part of a whole number, blokes. That's the deal.
Meanwhile, back to the racing. Bigger than a squirrel. Smaller than a hare. Renger van der Zande leads over Sebastien Bourdais right now. It's WTR Konica Minolta Cadillac vs. JDC-Miller Mustang Sampling Cadillac. Mike Conway has brought the #31 Whelen Engineering, Action Express Cadillac to the lane, and so too has Dane Cameron in the #6 Team Penske Acura. We've seen the idea of convergence and we wonder about a combined race. That would be a nightmare. Before the unification of the American Le Mans Series and Grand Am to form what we now know as IMSA and the WeatherTech Championship, in 2012, there was a combined race for the American Le Mans Series and the inaugural FIA World Endurance Championship, but the results were totally separate and it was a scoring nightmare, in the 12 Hours of Sebring.
Let us not make that mistake again. Thank you, Mr. John Hindhaugh at IMSA Radio, for mentioning that historical tidbit. We had cars that were single, double, and triple digit numbers. Ugh! What a bear! We are looking forward, very much, to the next round of the championship, the 12 Hours of Sebring where we will be racing the 12 hours but also with a support race on the Friday of the weekend for the WEC and you shall hear more about that, at the conclusion of this Rolex 24, and a reminder to mark you calendars. Wouldn't it be interesting if we had an eight hour qualifying race at Sebring, and the 12 Hours of Sebring a day later, with all the cars?
That would be cool, but it would be a bit of a bear to try and pull off as we see the #52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports LMP2 car, pit. You could open the final two rows of the 12 Hours of Sebring grid to the top four finishers from the WEC race, the 1,000 miles. That would be kind of cool, but again, lads, these are purely dreams and not so much what could be accomplished in the real world. I am just agreeing with some of the ideas put forth in the ruminations by Mr. Hindhaugh and Mr. Palmer as we carry on in this race.
Convergence won't combine the races, I hope not. Poor Gregg Creamer who did the podium celebrations, had a lot of work on his hands that particular day. It ended at 10:30 P.M. and the podium celebrations went 'til after midnight. 60 cars can start this race at maximum. The idea of adding ten to a dozen European cars to the Rolex 24 is a good idea. Convergence will assist WEC and Le Mans, probably more than it will assist IMSA. It's all down to pit lane sizes. We've got split events for GT's and prototypes. 34 WEC cars would be more than half the field at the Rolex 24 or the Petit Le Mans for instance.
Get wildcard entries. That's got to be the goal. Now we're getting into some sketchy territory as John, Jonny, and Diana Binks in the pit lane are into naming a race team after themselves. Palmer, Hindhaugh, & Binks. Deary me. That sounds like a dodgy law firm. Team PHB or PhD, have bought a car, an LMDh automobile perhaps, of any make, and you decide to start at the Rolex 24. Submit your entry and the WEC calendar is the same. Then you go to Circuit of the Americas in the WEC, but pick the races you like, very much like GT3. Then, go do either the 1,000 Miles of Sebring or the 12 Hours of Sebring, and we do Spa Francorchamps as a Le Mans warmup if you get a Le Mans invite, and then, you go in and do the 24 Hours of Le Mans, or I leave the car in Europe or come back to the states for the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen and the Petit Le Mans.
Or, if you've got a Japanese car, go to Fuji. This is exctly how sports car racing used to be in the 1970s and 1980s when private entrants could race Porsche's primarily, such as 917s, 935s, 956s, and 962s. They could race anywhere they wanted to, with slight detail changes to the regs, or to the current Balance of Performance that we will have. We hope it is a positive, however, we've got to see how this pans out. Ladies and gentlemen, don't quite count your chickens until they hatch here. You want to race at Le Mans with 60 cars, and Le Mans is already overly subscribed.
Le Mans DOES need more top class cars. However, the expense for some teams would be astronomical. ...And, the tech balance will be a king size headache, because just like in the very late 1970s and early, early 1980s before Group C came about circa 1982, the blokes at the ACO will have manage half a dozen classes of car and it'll get very, very confusing for those who are not true, dyed in the wool sports car racing fans, who watch and listen to every detail of the sport and read about it on a daily basis. I don't want to editorialize, although, I am speaking for myself, and I may be speaking for a myriad of others around the globe who feel the same way. But it would be a nightmare if we went back to having five or six classes like the '70s and '80s, despite the nostalgia factor.
The current LMP1/LMP2 cars can only be grandfathered in for a single season. You've also got a subset of ideas in Hypercar including hybrid and non hybrid power for road going automobiles, race prototype hybrid/non hybrid, current non hybrid LMP1 cars (not very likely... cars like the Rebellion and the Ginetta), and also a previous generation LMP1 such as ByKolles. Then, add in LMDh. Again, it's half a dozen different iterations of cars. The Hypercars are more likely to exist because the regulations are set now. They will be able to be developed to similar levels of performance. LMDh is going to be a very interesting deal. Do you add hybrid to DPi? These cars will be about 1100 kilograms, dovetailing five years of regs into one mishmash.
It's a ten year guaranteed homologation for LMP2. Get in on the ground floor for the new LMP2 cars and you are in like Flynn, for the new LMDh car, and a five year guarantee on the original LMDh cars. If you take a DPi to Le Mans, (a Cadillac, a Mazda), they would outrun the current generation LMP2 cars. This is a very interesting discussion, as I pick up on details that Mr. Hindhaugh is speaking of. For team owners and people in the business of sports car racing (I have that fan connection to someone), they would tell us as fans, "whoa. Hold on a second. You are getting way, way ahead of yourself. Let's just focus on the here and now and what the current IMSA season has to offer." They'd be absolutely right.
Then again, you would not have to worry about LMP2, with LMDh. Take for example the suspension systems. On a DPi, the suspension idea is pretty freed up and you can run whatever setup you'd like depending on the car you buy, a Cadillac, for instance. But, if you sign up and put in the investment for an Oreca LMP2 with the Gibson Technologies motor in it, you have a stock suspension system to deal with, that cannot be modified. You've also got to factor in a hybrid system. Plus, you've not got a spec engine in DPi. You run the engine your manufacturer has built. A 5.5 liter naturally aspirated V8 if you race a Cadillac. A 2.0 liter turbo 4 cylinder if you race a Mazda. A 3.5 liter turbocharged V6 if you race an Acura.
When IMSA decided to splinter the DPi cars away from the LMP2 cars, the DPi machines, according to Mr. Hindhaugh, the mantra was "you need to bring some more performance." The Hypercars as we look at the regs, they are targeting a lap time of 3:30 at Le Mans. Current DPi cars can do that. You don't have to balance the rest of the field at Le Mans if you integrate with everything else. We don't know if Hypercar will be allowed in IMSA. LMDh can run in WEC and ACO and IMSA. But, the Hypercar thing might only be a part of WEC/ACO/Le Mans. It'll come down to what cars we see at the Silverstone season opener for the WEC in September, and if these cars are opened up so that customer teams can purchase and run them.
Money is the key factor, too. Will teams have enough budget from their sponsors in IMSA to race at Le Mans in either Hypercar or LMDh even if they are aligned with a manufacturer? Right now there are more questions than answers. This is an awesomely exciting prospect, for fans. This is great. Yet, in my humble opinion (pardon the editorializing again), this is a carrot on a string. What has to be realized, is that racing in and of itself, of any kind, is an expensive business, and a lot of the IMSA teams, just don't have the budgets (even with factory support, very limited factory support), that a team in WEC or in a series like Formula 1, would be able to have. Aston Martin likes the convergence plan/path and so do Glickenhaus. We have not heard what Toyota wants to do.
Here in IMSA, U.S. based arms of global companies will have to think about it. Hold that thought, lads. We'll be back to that in just a second as we kind of kill time with eight and a half hours to go. Dillon Machavern at Turner Motorsports says their BMW M6 GT3 is cruising to preserve the car and they still need to do a brake change on the car yet. Like his co-driver Bill Auberlen, Machavern is a fan of the M6 GT3 and he says the race for Turner Motorsports has been uneventful, though they had a few little niggles with a side window an a bonnet. This is still in the "zombie land" stage, where drivers are just turning laps, and the pit crews are doing their darnedest to get a little bit of shuteye so they don't botch anything on upcoming pit stops.
Dillon Machavern is sharing the #96 Turner Motorsports BMW M6 GT3 with Jens Klingman, Bill Auberlen, and Robby Foley. Jens Klingmann is at the controls of the Liqui Moly car. We watch the GTD battle continue between Spencer Pumpelly and Patrick Long. Now, yours truly's mind is a bit scrambled, after this excitement about the future. So, do we go back to the conversation of LMDh/Hypercar/DPi 2.0, or do we just keep observing a marvelous motor race? Gentlemen, you've got the ball, you run with it. Patrick Long heads into turn one and Spencer Pumpelly is coming, fast. So, we are indeed back into race coverage.
The #44 GRT Magnus Lamborghini is dicing with the Porsche, the Wright Motorsports #16 car. The driver gradings and the double stinting of tires, they can make the racing exciting. Only 30 sets of tires are allowed in GTD. Blimey! That's unexpected after understanding that a class like DPi can use 38 sets of Michelin tires. More on convergence. Oreca have announced they will build an LMDh car, whatever the Rebellion Peugeot situation is. Hughes de Chaunac has indeed spoken. Meanwhile, Spencer Pumpelly is right on Patrick Long's tail. Now, as we continue to discuss, manufacturers and distributors on a global scale have said "you have to study it and study it hard". For most manufacturers, motorsport is decentralized.
Toyota, for their current program in the WEC, all that money comes from road car R&D, not marketing. Toyota comes from Japan but is based in Cologne, Germany. Other manufacturers do it differently. Ultimately, it comes down to this. Let's hypothesize that you have an Australian automaker, which isn't the case any longer, and they had a big sales investment in the U.S.A. LMDh will require a low level of money, so, the sales arm of that fictional Aussie company, can make it's own decision. Let's say you invest $20 million. Current DPi's for customers can be run between $3.5 and $5 million. Penske has a much larger budget. That's reasonable. It has to be a global program if you are talking about multiple millions of dollars, say you spend $50-$100 million on an idea to go racing in LMDh.
Several regions of the sales of this auto company, will be a big deal. It'll be a big budget for Hypercar. The LMP1 car manufacturers left due to corporate politics, not because of budget. How much marketing money do I need to throw at this? We support series X, Y, or Z. That's why world championships are so hard to get the bread for. Pulling costs down, is a big idea. LMDh has this idea. Now, aside from all this prattle about manufacturers, we've still got a motor race at the moment. We have, onto the banking, look, the #3 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R trying to gain a lap back on the GTLM leading BMW M8 GTE.
Antonio Garcia is trying to pass by Jesse Krohn to get a lap back. Only two cars in GTLM are on the lead lap and we've talked about them. The BMW and the second Porsche owe us a pit stop. GT Daytona pit stops are happening now. Dennis Olsen is in for Pfaff Motorsports and Andrea Caldarelli has a slow stop in the #48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini as the fuel is slow to go into the car. Hold on a second, folks. We've got drama as the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R is headed behind the wall, going back to the garage.
The car has a headlight out. It's a padiddle, and there must be some kind of trouble on the car. Some cars, the headlights flash from left to right to indicate it's in the lane. They've done a reset on the car and the engine has no fire. The car that was the GTD class leader is in the garage. Wow. That's a major sucker punch for Pfaff Motorsports, after they avoided penalty for taking a wave around that they shouldn't have, that the marshals dinged them for, and they redressed the balance and spoke to the marshals to avoid trouble. The #10 Cadillac, Renger van der Zande is 48 seconds ahead of Sebastien Bourdais, who has been picking up a little steam.
We've had only three Full Course Yellows in this race, for a combined total of 56 minutes and 23 seconds, and only 16 laps. The middle yellow was when the LMP2 car was stuck in the International Horseshoe and also, remember yesterday, there was that bizarre incident when the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin and the #47 PPM Lamborghini came a cropper headed for the pit lane. The third yellow was a quick one, for about 16 minutes and yours truly honestly can't remember what on earth the third yellow was for. We've got more important matters to attend to, look. The GTLM leading cars are all in the lane for service.
The two Porsche's and the #24 BMW have pitted. Laurens Vanthoor is taking over Porsche #912 from Matthieu Jaminet, and all four tires are being changed while fuel is being added to the car. The BMW is currently scored as the GTLM leader due to their pit stall being farther down. The BMW is fueling, and the Porsche goes by. The #24 BMW spins its wheels and Jesse Krohn comes out behind the #912 which checks up due to the Wright Motorsports GTD Porsche being in front on the exit lane. Laurens Vanthoor is headed out for another stint and Jesse Krohn in the BMW, both of these lads have cold tires. Nick Tandy, meanwhile, who pitted a wee while back, he is going to gain a slight advantage.
You are on tiptoes exiting the lane on cold tires. The Porsche's chassis may be built in such a way that th car is far gentler on it's tires through the infield road course here at Daytona, than is the BMW. Changing the driver should not affect your pit stop time. The BMW changed drivers, the Porsche didn't, and both took four tires and petrol. That's down to how much petrol the BMW crew put into the tank. "Jam Jam"kept his tires on. Dane Cameron has been in and out of the lane and stays in the car. He too, is tiptoeing on cold tires. Tandy knows he's in the fight for GTLM. He put in the #911 car's fastest sector one time on the board.
The top six in GTLM are now all back on the lead lap. The #62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GTE soldiers on after it looked like they were way off the board earlier. We are onboard with the #6 Acura Team Penske car again, and above the engine note of the sonorous Honda turbo V6, we can hear more chattering and scraping from the front splitter. The car still seems to be porpoising on the banking. It's still porpoising. Wow. The deal is, listening on the radio around Daytona, you might believe it's static over the airwaves, but no. It's the chattering of the front nose of the car, scraping the deck on the pavement.
Now, more pit action, as the #31 Whelen Cadillac DPi-V.R for Action Express is into the lane. Has Acura swapped noses? No. Felipe Nasr is at the wheel of the #31. A tidy pit stop, and they likely maybe put tires on the car? Felipe Nasr remains at the controls and holds third in the overall right now. We look for the #77 Mazda in the hands of Tristan Nunez who is close by. We swap over to Laurens Vanthoor in the #912 Porsche 911 RSR-19 and he has opened a lead in GTLM of a whole second over his competition. Oh boy! The scrap in GTLM is getting spicy another time! The BMW has a run through turn one on the road course section and he's going to be the shark gulping the minnow here in a second.
Up the inside, Laurens Vanthoor has given Jesse Krohn racing space on the inside and Krohn, the Finn, makes the pass on the Belgian. Krohn clocks in the fastest lap for the BMW at 1:42.770. 1:42.9 for Nick Tandy. Drivers are getting into a rhythm in the cooler temperatures, as they have a selection of tire compounds from Michelin that you can mix and match. Two great tastes in one candy bar so to speak, however, the flavors might not mix well, because the tire compounds have to be somewhat uniform or the car will drive and steer like a pig. Maybe a slightly harder compound will settle it down.
We are close to 2/3rds distance as the #52 PR1 Mathiasen LMP2 car has made it's most recent pit stops. Deary me!, look. We've got the PR1 Mathiasen car in a spot of bother through the International Horseshoe. He locks the brakes on cold tires. He's skating off the road. Gabriel Aubry is using the world's fastest lawn mower. Go on, Gabby. What are you going to do, sunshine? Don't hit the wall! Holy smokes! He saved that automobile from entering the scrapyard or at least entering the pit lane for repairs, by using the escape road for the emergency vehicles, to his advantage! Phew! That was a close shave, mate. If you fall off that secondary asphalt, you'll be on a wild ride through the grass, and zonk, into the tire wall.
Here's it all again, in slow motion. Aubry locks the brakes. You can see the tell tale smoke. No ABS on LMP2 cars. He's slewing to the outside, on the damp, dew laden grass. Cold tires, still with release agent worked into them. Aubry is a lucky chap that he didn't crunch the wall over there. That motorcar almost met doom. So close! The Frenchman has not dropped out of the top two, nor have his team mates. In recent memory, the car has been racing against the #81 DragonSpeed car. The #38 Performance Tech car, third in class, with Kyle Masson at the wheel of it, has had a litany of woes in this race so far. Renger van der Zande, is exceptionally quick and very committed through the kink.
He's on his merry way in the lead at the moment and he can drive on his own, or battling a competitor. He's probably Harry Flatters through the kink, but the attitude of the car makes it look effortless. Into the lane, another Cadillac. These are our pals from Minnesota, the JDC-Miller team with the #5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R. Scheduled service or so it appears. Fuel and tires. No driver change. Sebastien Bourdais stays in the car. They add fuel and are off the air jacks. The car stalled, fluffing the stop momentarily. One thing the team made a mistake of was putting the air line in front of the car for the rattle gun and the car controller didn't notice. The mechanic was trying to move the crimped air hose out of the way and the bloke with the lollipop who is the car controller didn't see that.
The mechanic flicked the hose with his wrist like cracking a whip. Go! Stop! Go! Nope. Stalled the engine. Sebastien Bourdais didn't lose all that much time as we have a whole 1/3rd of the motor race left to go. No worries, mate. The lead battle in GTLM is beyond a simmer. It's boiling. The steam, rising off the helmet of Laurens Vanthoor as he says, "OK Mr. BMW, you are going down. I will pass you, whether you like it or not." They've been trading fast sectors and the gap is a half a second. Nick Tandy is closing. He's got only 13 seconds before he comes up on this battle. So, like a shark hunting for prey, Tandy and Vanthoor, both of them can smell blood in the water.
The two Porsche projectiles are after the Munich missile here. It's a rivalry of epic proportions between the two fabled German marques for the top of the tree in GTLM. Vanthoor is desperate to get by the BMW as Krohn gets a little tail happy through turn six but he still can push the bye bye button over the Porsche. Wow. The #38 Performance Tech LMP2 car was refueled in the lane but it stalled after coming down off it's air jacks. The car actually looks pretty clean. Taffic ahead for Jesse Krohn, and he can't pass the #86 Acura NSX, the pink and black Acura, Jules Gounon at the controls, the Monagasque.
Porsche pushing, pushing, pushing, and the BMW is flying as well. Into turn six again, gives it a littlr more room off the curbs and the can put the welly down and the BMW screams away from the Porsche with pure power. They're pretty even under braking, but the acceleration is stunning on the M8. That BMW M8 is a smashing automobile, and from experience at the race this weekend, that car is a stealth weapon. You don't even know it is there. The engine is very quiet. Pit stop time for race leader, Renger van der Zande. The car is getting fully serviced with fresh new tires, and fuel, and no driver change as van der Zande stays aboard. They drop the car off the air jacks and the last bit of fuel into the tank. The car is down and away. They had a pressurized bottle of oil there as well for preventative maintenance.
Yes. Oil was added, and we continue to watch the GTLM battle and it's a humdinger. The curbing through the Bus Stop was changed since the Roar Before the 24 test here at the beginning of the month and that's been catching out the two Lexus RC F GT3's, the AVS cars. The #14 is placed better than is the #12. Jack Hawksworth is at the wheel of #14 right now. The Porsche's also went through a spot of bother at the chicane with the front splitters breaking up and getting all kinds of damage during the Roar Before the 24 as well. They were changing front splitters and setting the ride height. They've had no splitter dramas in the motor race. Andrea Caldarelli sets a new fastest lap in the GT Daytona ranks aboard the Paul Miller Racing #48 Lamborghini Huracan GT3. 1:45.584 is the fast lap time.
He's faster than anyone in GT Daytona right now. Second spot is held down by Mirko Bortolotti in the #88 WRT Speedstar Audi R8, and then comes Spencer Pumpelly in the #44 GRT Magnus Flex Box Lamborghini. Jesse Krohn cannot shake the Porsche's and Nick Tandy is also coming in a hurry. So the top three in class are now BMW, Porsche, Porsche, and it's been this way for some time now. Further behind them, holding station, Antonio Garcia in the best placed new Chevrolet Corvette C8.R while it's sister car, the #4 went to the garage for repairs eons ago. Did that car come back out on track? No. It's game over for Corvette #4, out with an oil leak.
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