Porsche wins the 24 Hours of Daytona just ahead of Cadillac: LMDh director Urs Kuratle is therefore convinced that it looked more dominant than it actually was.
Porsche wins the 24 Hours of Daytona, the season opener of the 2026 IMSA SportsCar Championship, for the third time in a row. However, this comes as no surprise, as preliminary testing already indicated that the road to overall victory would once again lead through Zuffenhausen and their dominant 963.
The result of the Rolex 24 is therefore perhaps a little surprising: the winning Penske Porsche (Nasr/Andlauer/Heinrich) crossed the finish line just 1.569 seconds ahead of the second-placed Action Express Cadillac.
The two Penske Porsches had already built up a comfortable 20-second lead in the first stint, which melted away again due to the yellow flag phases. “I think it looked more dominant than it actually was in the end,” says Porsche LMDh boss Urs Kuratle.
“We all know that in the first 22 hours, everyone tries to stay in the lead lap, and that’s what we did,” “So it looked more dominant than it actually was. I’m convinced of that.”
Cadillac only comes into its own in the final stages
The last two hours were even “quite interesting,” adds Kuratle. Suddenly, the Action Express Cadillac, which had been largely inconspicuous for much of the race due to both its starting position penalty and several penalties during the race, came into play.
Cadillac was even a lap behind at times and only benefited from the numerous yellow phases in the final hours of the race. “The entire field improved significantly overall,” emphasized race winner Felipe Nasr in the post-race press conference.
“There were phases in the race when I thought, ‘Okay, we have pretty good pace’. But there were also other phases where, for example, the [Cadillac] was always very fast when you looked at the sector times.“
Nasr speaks of an ”extremely intense“ final phase
Nevertheless, Penske was ”in good shape from start to finish,” according to Nasr. However, the conditions were challenging: “It was a big challenge just to keep the car on the track. You could see how the car was sliding in the bus stop chicane – not just us, but Cadillac too.”
The competition seemed to cope better with this, as Jack Aitken was even able to put pressure on Porsche in the final stages. “I was surprised at how strong they were at the end,” admits Nasr. “They had a lot of pace, especially in the traction zones, where they were very good.”
“That last hour in the car was extremely intense,” reports the Brazilian, who received a lot of information from the team. “The spotters said, ‘He’s taking a different line here, a different line there. As a driver, you had to process a lot of information at the same time.“
The Cadillac came dangerously close to the victorious Porsche several times. ”A few times I had to choose my line and brake as late as possible. He also tried everything,“ Nasr sums up. ”I just drove with my heart and relied on my experience.”