Townsend Bell and company in the #12, will be back in the race soon, the #12 Lexus. Pit stop time in GTD Pro for Corvette. This is the Taylor/Catsburg/Garcia entry. The sister car being driven by Marco Sorensen, Tommy Milner, and Nick Tandy. Also in the lane, the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R. Matt Campbell, Mathieu Jaminet, and current driver, Felipe Nasr. Nasr is moving to Porsche and Team Penske in GTP for next year. Maybe Jaminet and Campbell might will join the Porsche factory team in GTP. We'll see. Nasr is feeling out the car as he is headed on track in a GT3 car for the first time. Watch out in the International Horseshoe. That is a bugaboo of a corner in this cold. The lack of grip continues all the way to turns five and six and back up to the banking.
The Porsche 911 GT3R is mid engined, and on cold tires it is absolutely diabolical. PR1/Mathiasen and Win Autosport are at the top of LMP2. Josh Pierson, at age 15, he is one of the drivers here at Win Autosport. Pierson sharing with Steven Thomas, Harry Tincknell, and Jonathan Bomarito. Now, Ben Keating is in the #5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac, hoping for a yellow, to do a triple stint before he gets back to the #52 PR1/Mathiasen LMP2 entry. Stock car drivers are also getting younger and younger. Jose Maria Lopez has resumed in the lead. We saw, oof, an incident between Brendon Iribe in the #70 Inception Racing McLaren and the LMP3 #7 car for Forty7 Motorsports. That car being shared by Mark Kvamme, Austin McCusker, Trenton Estep, and Frenchman Antoine Doquin.
Inception, the #70 has Brendon Iribe, Frederik Schandorff, Ollie Milroy, and Jordan Pepper. Tight squeeze there, look, in GTD Pro between Felipe Nasr and Alessio Picariello. Cooper MacNeil is driving for WeatherTech but driving two different GT3 cars with the Porsche 911 GT3R and the Mercedes AMG GT3. The Porsche is the car he will drive for the full season. But he can drive the Mercedes to also try and win a Rolex watch. The #7 Forty7 Motorsports LMP3 entry, Austin McCusker must serve an incident responsibility penalty for tagging Brendon Iribe.
We had two McLaren's up front earlier with Fred Schandorff and Brendon Iribe as the #19 Lamborghini spins and almost gets clobbered out of the Le Mans chicane! John Megrue at the controls. Felipe Nasr going for the GTD Pro lead or keeping it, away from Alessio Picariello, side drafting, just like the stock cars do on the high banks here at Daytona. Two decades ago, Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. shared a car with Corvette Racing here at the Rolex 24. Lopez overslows the car, in the #48 and Sebastien Bourdais over committed. Right rear corner, let's see. Cumulative damage will be a concern.
Acura now leads. Helio Castroneves for Meyer Shank Racing in the #60 Acura leading the similar car #10 for Wayne Taylor Racing in the hands of Will Stevens. Jose Maria Lopez has locked the tires up and had to gather the car up through turn six. No ABS on the prototypes. Tristan Nunez is now at the wheel of the #31 Whelen Cadillac as Helio Castroneves pits for tires and fuel. MSR serviced and sent. The GTD Pro battle continues. Nasr vs. Picariello. Pfaff vs. WeatherTech Porsche's. More intermingling between GTD's and LMP2's. Nasr still on the fight against Picariello. The battle of the Porsche's. Pfaff vs. WeatherTech. The sun is lowering in the sky slightly. It will be dark in a couple hours and we will have 12-13 hours of darkness to look forward to in January here at Daytona.
Darkness and cold. If you are at the track, bundle up, and stay warm. Another of the GTD Pro Porsche's coming to the fore. This is the #2 KCMG entry, a team we have seen in SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge racing for all GT3 cars. This team also in GTD Pro with a Porsche. Laurens Vanthoor, Patrick Pilet, Dennis Olsen, and Alexandre Imperatori, the Swiss driver. It looks like maybe the #48 Ally Action Express Cadillac has spun again. We are now also watching the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura. A battle is afoot in GTD between Aston Martin's #44 and #27. Magnus Racing and The Heart of Racing. More on that in a moment.
Spin there, look, for the #38 Performance Tech LMP3 car. Sharing the driving chores, Dan Goldburg, Nico Pino, Garrett Grist, and Hikaru Abe, from the U.S.A., Chile, Canada, and Japan, respectively. Jose Maria Lopez is back on the button, slicing and dicing through the traffic. Meanwhile, it appears the #60 Acura is now in the lead of this motor race. Midway through the third hour of the action. The skies are gorgeous in Florida, but as we've said, it is chilly! We have had one yellow and lots of green flag racing. We see the #48 has lap pace. The Acura's have pace as well. Track position will be key in this chess game.
The 61-car field has made traffic and pack racing immense, threading the needle, just like the stock cars on the banking during the Daytona 500. One of the corner workers after that incident with Dwight Merriman has been taken to the hospital. Hope he is OK. Always grateful for the men and women in the white overalls or orange overalls in the rest of the world, helping to keep the drivers safe in racing all over the world. God Bless you all. Renger van der Zande now in the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac leads. van der Zande ahead of the #10 Acura of Will Stevens for the Wayne Taylor Racing team. We welcome Steve Letarte and Alexander Rossi to the Peacock Pit Box.
Rossi, the defending Rolex 24 champion, for Acura and Wayne Taylor Racing, he is glad to be back. It can be instinct for drivers who are in contention even in the early going, watching where the GT cars are. van der Zande, Stevens, Castroneves, and Nunez, the top four. In LMP2, Scott Huffaker leads Josh Pierson, Tijman van der Helm in the #69 G-Drive Oreca, and Devlin DeFrancesco. LMP3 has Gar Robinson leading, Dr. Lance Willsey, Jarett Andretti, and George Kurtz. GTD Pro, Alexandre Imperatori leads Felipe Nasr, Alessio Picariello, and James Calado. GTD has Sandy Mitchell leading Mikael Grenier, Kenny Habul, and Michael de Quesada.
As far as Action Express, they are fourth and fifth. Tristan Nunez fourth and Jose Maria Lopez fifth. You have to put a veteran driver who can understand how to make a sports car work and have the pace and the mechanical sympathy. It is cold and we saw mist and rain in Free Practice sessions. Whoops. A spin for the #33 LMP3 car. Lance Willsey driving for Sean Creech Motorsports. Willsey did not want to lock up into turn one with all the dust and clag in turn one offline. Willsey is back on the button. Calvin Fish, in the NBC broadcast booth is a former champion, winning here in 1990 for Jack Roush in a Ford Mustang with Robby Gordon and Lyn St. James. I believe they were actually racing a Mercury Cougar back in those days.
Tristan Nunez, slicing his way around an LMP3 car, the #38 Performance Tech entry mentioned a wee while ago. We are getting close to the completion of the third hour and shadows will be growing long. The cool temperatures are still what we are looking at. It will be tricky conditions. We move to Parker Kligerman in the pit lane. The sun is drawing low in the sky. We watch the #60 MSR Acura, pitting a few laps later than other DPi cars. The key for that is they are saving fuel and making fewer pit stops. We will watch the team strategies for all seven DPi teams. The mileage game has come to the fore in sports cars, IndyCar, and NASCAR. Adjust your fuel map but use your feet too. Lift off the throttle, coast the car and brake deeper into the turn.
Lifting and coasting adds up with fuel saving over the course of a stint. We are getting set for DPi and LMP2 pit stops. The #52 PR1/Mathiasen car leads LMP2. Scott Huffaker at the wheel of it. In GT Daytona, the #39 CarBahn with Peregrine Racing Lamborghini leads in class. Sandy Mitchell behind the wheel, over the defending champs at Winward Racing Mercedes with Mikael Grenier at the controls. #48, the Ally AXR Cadillac is in the pit lane now. Mitchell ran SRO America in 2021. The #5 JDC-Miller Cadillac is in as the #63 TR3 Lamborghini spins, John Megrue at the wheel. Megrue, in his first Rolex 24. He gets nudged by the WeatherTech Porsche, the #79 entry.
Megrue just got nerfed by Picariello. He understeered probably, misjudged the turn. Small nerfs can add up in the Le Mans chicane. John Megrue shares with Bill Sweedler, Jeff Segal, and Giacomo Altoe, the rapid Italian. Well, well. Another Full Course Yellow. The #34 GMG Porsche has just clouted the wall in the west horseshoe! This is a front end first accident, again. A fast lefthand turn in the kink after the International Horseshoe. Kyle Washington at the controls, a Rolex 24 rookie. Washington is a big, strong individual. He is fine. But it seems the GMG boys' race is over. Washington, sharing with James Sofronas, Jeroen Bleekemolen, and Klaus Bachler.
Under yellow, we are working steadily to the end of another racing hour. We are seeing some great onboard camera pictures from several of the cars in a good number of the classes and from different brands as well. The great part of sports car racing is the mechanical diversity of cars and engine combinations even though the cars have become more standardized over the years. Be patient. What do you have for a car? Lay out a plan as the race goes on. Try and survive. Do not give up. Track position is critical. Helio Castroneves needs to pit but the MSR Acura team is really needing to see where they are on their pit strategy.
The GMG Porsche #34 is being towed away. The driver is OK. We should be getting back to green soon. We have seen a myriad of pit stops and the DPi cars are in the lane. MSR are in the lane and the #01 Chip Ganassi Cadillac will change a nose after contact with the #48 Action Express Ally Cadillac. They are doing it under yellow to save time. A traffic jam there for the LMP2 and LMP3 cars. The carbon brakes will likely go the full distance. You don't want the brake ducting to be damaged because that will lead to heat buildup and so forth affecting the brakes. The teams have boatloads of spares. Marcus Ericsson is at the wheel of the #02 Cadillac.
Ericsson has not raced a closed cockpit car save for a rally car in his native Sweden. The IndyCar drivers can adjust to these prototype race cars. Get used to the roof. Get used to the pillars. You are off to the side for the driving position and not in the center of the car.
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