We welcome Kevin Lee to the pit lane. The Corvette team is still repairing the #4 entry. It sounds like they still have a lot of work to do. Bad luck for Marco Sorensen, Tommy Milner, and Nick Tandy. We continue under safety car. Meyer Shank Racing and Simon Pagenaud have now worked their eay back up to second spot. Pipo Derani and Kamui Kobayashi are third and fourth for Action Express. The Acura and the Cadillac have very different engines. A big, naturally aspirated V8 in the Cadillac and a turbocharged V6 in the Acura. The Cadillac's traction control is bang on the money. Simon Pagenaud wants to move and pass Kevin Magnussen. Green flag! Pagenaud is going to be flying and Pipo Derani is lurking, probing in third place.
Loic Duval seems to be catching up to Kamui Kobayashi as well. Pipo Derani is going after Simon Pagenaud as well. Maybe the Cadillac gets tire temperature sooner than does the Acura. The Acura's will need a longer stint at the end to compete against the Cadillac's. Acura's used to have rear tire degradation issues and maybe the weather has something to do with it. The Acura's were run for a while by Team Penske and then split to Wayne Taylor Racing and Meyer Shank Racing, with two different setup philosophies. Ben Keating says he lost power out of the Bus Stop in the #52 PR1/Mathiasen Oreca. There is a piece of plastic that has wrapped itself around the air intake!
Oh my gosh! That is unbelievable! Look at the flames coming off the exhausts. It is in the airbox inlet at the top. That is a simple fix. Come into the lane and sort that out and keep going. A penalty assessed to the #33 Sean Creech Motorsports LMP3 car. A drive through penalty for incident responsibility and a drive through penalty or stop and hold. Many cars also have penalties for improper final wave by procedures in GT Daytona Pro and GT Daytona! That is a three-and-a-half-minute penalty! The #52 will be back at speed. Cooper MacNeil, rather than Jules Gounon, will have to take this heavy three-and-a-half-minute penalty. The advantage has to be erased.
The #19 Lamborghini is leading the GT Daytona class. Bill Sweedler, John Megrue, Giacomo Altoe, and Jeff Segal. Devlin DeFrancesco says that even though their team at DragonSpeed has had trouble, they are coming back to the fore. DeFrancesco says this is good practice for his IndyCar debut in February. We have had some reshuffling in the order. James Allen for G-Drive leads LMP2. Gar Robinson leads LMP3. Ben Barnicoat leads GTD Pro and in GTD, Jan Heylen. Former IndyCar driver, Darren Manning, is assisting Andy Priaulx and his son Sebastian Priaulx who is in the car. Darren Manning is Sebastian Priaulx's godfather. Priaulx is in the #33 Sean Creech Motorsports LMP3 entry.
Seb Priaulx won his debut race in Michelin Pilot Challenge. He is a very speedy driver and the world is his oyster at the moment. He could get into open wheel, into IndyCar. That is a definite possibility. He will focus on sports cars with IMSA and/or World Endurance Championship. The #33 Sean Creech Motorsports entry has deep talent. Joao Barbosa, Malthe Jakobsen, Seb Priaulx, and Dr. Lance Willsey in that car. 40 degrees ambient temperature, 5 mile per hour eastern wind, and no cloud cover to keep heat in the atmosphere. It is going to get cold. The LMP3 car has more speed, but the traction control is more rudimentary than on a GT Daytona car. Again, the GTD regs are the same as the worldwide GT3 platform. That is exactly what they are.
Jan Heylen in the #16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R, is very fastl sharing with Ryan Hardwick, Zacharie Robichon, and Richard Lietz. Robichon was with Pfaff Motorsports last year. Ben Barnicoat is at the wheel of the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 leading GTD Pro over Mercedes and Ferrari. We have seen a lot of improper wave by procedure penalties that have indeed been served. Everyone is racing for a Rolex Cosmograph watch. Drivers can go into a Rolex dealer and buy a Daytona Cosmograph. But, they want to win it. They want to earn it.
The #60 MSR Acura is in pit lane. There was a stop and hold in GTD Pro for #14 and #97. Pipo Derani stays in the #31 and Simon Pagenaud in #60. A stop and hold for the #14 Lexus which will drop it down the order. Everyone in DPi is matching each other stint for stint. Trouble for the #6 LMP3 entry for Muehlner Motorsports America car. Simon Pagenaud is back on the lead lap in Acura #60, running sixth in the overall. Kamui Kobayashi is back into the race lead. Oliver Rasmussen locks up the tires and could not stop too well. He is back underway now. Daniel Serra continues leading GTD Pro for Ferrari.
Laurens Vanthoor is second in the #2 KCMG Porsche. Pipo Derani is pressing Alex Lynn for position. This is for second spot. We may be seeing some slight trouble with the #19 Lamborghini, but maybe it is OK again. It spun with it's driver and poor old Dan Goldburg spins again in the #38 Performance Tech LMP3 entry. Goldburg has a left rear tire down. Kamui Kobayashi leads the motor race ahead of Alex Lynn, Pipo Derani, and Simon Pagenaud. Ben Barnicoat has had to serve a penalty for improper wave by procedures. That was the same deal for the #97 WeatherTech Mercedes. This event ebbs and flows and arguing with the stewards is pointless. Get it out of the way and get back into the game.
We rejoin Leigh Diffey and Calvin Fish who are now back in the commentary box. Kamui Kobayashi is still leading. The Ganassi cars have a slight edge in overall pace, but the two Action Express cars are hanging in there, keeping up the fight. The team had a harried effort to fix the damage, but they kept their cool about it. So, the #69 G-Drive entry pits in LMP2 with James Allen from Australia at the controls. He shares with American John Falb, Luca Ghiotto from Italy, and Dutchman Tijmen van der Helm.
Gar Robinson, reigning LMP3 champion pits the #74 Riley Motorsports 74 Ranch Resort car to the lane. Matthieu Jaminet is pitting the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche from the lead in GTD Pro and Austin Cindric will take the class lead in the #15 WeatherTech Mercedes. Daniel Serra aboard the #62 Risi Competizione Ferrari, coming to the fore. The cold air is helping the horsepower factor here at Daytona International Speedway and we have to wait and see what tire grip is going to do. Austin Cindric has raced sports cars, Australian Super 2 touring cars, NASCAR, and more. Austin Cindric has great curiosity which overcomes fear of not doing well.
Jordan Pepper is seventh in GT Daytona in the McLaren for Inception Racing, right where he started with the team. Lucas Auer also is running well, first in GTD.
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