The D at the D: Daytona 24 Hours attracts Detroit's top race teams from Ford to GM to Penske
Henry PayneDaytona Beach, Florida — The Detroit Lions have their eye on winning a Super Bowl. Detroit’s biggest automotive names have their eyes on winning the Super Bowl of American sportscar racing.
Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford and Penske are in Daytona Beach this weekend for the 62nd running of the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona — the first race on the highly-competitive IMSA Weathertech Sportscar calendar. The series has become a must for international performance brands putting their thoroughbreds against the best in the world — while testing their equipment over 24 hours at over 200 mph on Daytona’s icon roval (road course combined with NASCAR oval).
Like the football Super Bowl, the epic Rolex 24 attracts a who’s who of drivers from IndyCar, Formula One, and even celebrity Brad Pitt, who will be capturing footage for his new racing movie.
Cadillac’s GTP hybrid prototypes swept the front row of qualifying last weekend and will be carrying the American flag against foreign rivals from Acura, BMW and Porsche. The latter is partnered with Roger “The Captain” Penske, the Bloomfield Hills-based team owner seeking his second Daytona 24 win to go with his chart-topping 19 Indy 500 victories. Team Penske partners with Chevrolet in IndyCar, but for international sportscar racing, it has teamed with the most successful sportscar team in motorsport. Porsche’s 23 Daytona wins is unmatched.
But for all the firepower at the front of the grid, the rivalry that many in the Motor City will be watching is in the GT class as Corvette and Mustang go head-to-head for the first time in the GT class.
Both brands have embraced new rules by the North American IMSA series and international World Endurance Championship that have standardized GT3 racing qualifications across the world. Manufacturers can sell their race cars to private teams in multiple international series.
The Corvette Z06 GT3.R and Mustang GT3 will debut for the first time in Daytona. They will not only be racing each other but also GT3 entries from a who’s who of manufacturers including Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, McLaren, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, and Acura.
Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley — who once famously trash-talked General Motors Co. saying "I'm going to beat Chevrolet on the head with a bat, and I'm going to enjoy it” — downplayed the matchup. “Of course we want to beat them, but it really is chalk and cheese,” he said in an interview of the production sportscars aimed at different demographics.
Ford sells its Mustang production car in 144 countries and the GT3 program is an avenue to appeal to consumers as well as make money on race program by selling the $800,000 beasts to customer teams. As the industry homogenizes under single-powertrain, electric vehicle mandates, racing V8-fired cyborgs like the Mustang and Corvette helps maintain brand identity.
Under IMSA’s Balance of Performance rules, the two race cars — only required to share a chassis with production cars — will be evenly matched on track and will each feature thundering, crowd-pleasing V-8s.
The Mustang GT3, built by Multimatic’s race shop in Charlotte, brings to the dogfight a ferocious-looking machine with a rear wing the size of a Boeing 737. The factory team will field two cars featuring veteran drivers like Joey Hand and Dirk Müller — who teamed on a historic victory for the mid-engine Ford GT at the 2016 Le Mans on the 50th anniversary of the marque’s first Le Mans win. A customer car entered by Proton Competition will also be on the grid.
“We are the underdogs against the Ferrari and Porsche teams that have a lot of experience in IMSA racing,” said Farley. “But we want to sustain this for decades and we have a real chance to challenge the European elite. We have a chance to be one of the great brands.”
For its part, Corvette will bring four new Corvette Z06 GT3.R race cars to the dance — two fielded by the factory-backed, Pratt Miller Motorsports team out of New Hudson — and two from privateer AWA.
A total of 36 GT cars will roll of the grid at 1:40 p.m. Saturday for the grueling overnight race.
Leading the field will be defending champion Action Express Racing’s #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac V-Series.R GTP hybrid, whose ace driver Pipo Derani smashed the track record by two seconds in qualifying.
“The change in the past year is massive. The development has been tremendous,” said Derani, who won the first championship of the hybrid era last year. The hybrid prototype cars have allowed manufacturers to race with trendy electric motors favored by governments while still pleasing fans with high horsepower V-8s.
To bring home the connection between racing and production, the new 2025 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing sedan will pace the field the the green flag — its 668-horsepower V-8 putting out the same power as the prototype hellions behind it.
Auto races have become major consumer competition for events like the Detroit auto show, with manufacturers at Daytona mirroring their GT race cars with displays of production cars on the infield midway. GM, for example will have Cadillac and Corvette displays.
Team Penske’s partnership nearly bore fruit last year, with the Porsche Penske 963 in contention with Cadillac for the season title right down to the season finale at Road Atlanta.
“Our main focus will be on reliability, which was a problem for us last year,” Urs Kuratle, Porsche director of factory GTP racing, said in an interview.
Porsche will bring four 963 prototypes to the the grid — two Porsche Penske factory entries and two with private teams, JDC Miller and Proton. The #7 Porsche Penske 963 will lead the way, qualifying third behind an all-Cadillac front row with Felipe Nasr, Dane Cameron, Matt Campbell, and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden behind the wheel.
Newgarden’s presence is testament to the star power that Daytona brings as the world’s best drivers — from every motorsport — convene to add the classic to their trophy case.
In addition to Newgarden, resigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou, IndyCar racer and 2023 GTP winner Tom Blomqvist, and six-time IndyCar champ Scott Dixon will be behind the wheel of Cadillac GTP cars.
Other IndyCar divers in the field include Colton Herta (Acura GTP), Alexander Rossi (McLaren GT), Romain Grosjean (Lamborghini GT), Katherine Legge (Acura GT), Scott McLaughlin, Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist in LMP2 prototype cars (less powerful than the GTPs), and Marcus Ericsson — winner of the 2022 Indy 500 — will be at the wheel of the Wayne Taylor Racing Andretti Acura GTP. Also racing are Ex-Formula One stars Jenson Button (Acura GTP), Felipe Massa (LMP2) and Eddie Cheever (Lamborghini GT).
"I'm very excited to return to Daytona after competing with the team in 2022. I can't wait to get behind the wheel of the new hybrid,” said Spaniard Palou.
If that’s not enough star power, then keep an eye out for Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt, who is filming a Formula One-themed movie (rumored to be titled "Apex"). The plot line involves Pitt as an aging Rolex 24 driver who mentors an F1 rookie. The #120 Wright Motorsport Porsche GT will have a camera on board shooting footage.
A total of 10 GTP cars will line up at the tip of the spear Saturday. Thirteen more LMP2 cars will follow along with the huge GT field for total entry of 59 cars, making for a very busy 24 hours as prototypes make their way through the slower GT field.
The Rolex 24 at Daytona goes green at 1:40 p.m. Saturday with race broadcast partners NBC, USA Network and Peacock sharing airtime across the 24-hour Super Bowl of racing.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.