Daytona International Speedway will roar to life from its winter hibernation as the 61-car field for the 63rd edition of the Rolex 24 at Daytona begins testing on the 12-turn, 3.56-mile road course.
More than 200 drivers will be anxious to get their turn behind the wheel during the Roar Before the Rolex 24, which will comprise seven practices of more than 10 hours from Friday through Sunday.
All four IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship classes are scheduled to turn laps today starting at 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. with another session scheduled from 3-5 p.m. (click here for the daily schedule for the next 12 days at Daytona).
With cars officially on track for the first time this month, here are five pressing questions heading into the 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona season opener:
Can Meyer Shank Racing make a triumphant return?
Last year, Mike Shank watched the Rolex 24 at Daytona from aboard his 42-foot boat in the Florida Keys, but the longtime team owner was far from paradise.
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship opened its season with Shank absent from Daytona for the first time in 20 years despite being the two-time defending champion of the Rolex 24. Six weeks after its second consecutive overall victory in 2023, Meyer Shank Racing suffered one of the costliest penalties in IMSA history because of manipulated tire pressure data on its winning No. 60 Acura ARX-06 entry.
Though the team was allowed to keep the victory, the repercussions were devastating. Aside from a $50,000 fine, the loss of prize money and a points deduction that essentially locked the team out of the championship, MSR also lost its support from Honda (whose Acura engineers discovered the malfeasance and self-reported to IMSA).
Shank’s racing organization focused last season on IndyCar before being welcomed back into the Acura fold in a big way for 2025. The team will expand to fielding two ARX-06s out of its Ohio shop (with Honda Racing Corp. handling at-track race engineering and strategy for the new No. 93), and the Daytona driver lineup is impressive.
Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun return as the full-time drivers of the No. 60 with Felix Rosenqvist (who drives for MSR in IndyCar) and six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon (who became available for the endurance races while Chip Ganassi Racing is on hiatus from sports cars).
On the No. 93, two-time Rolex 24 winner Renger van der Zande will be paired with former BMW ace Nick Yellolly. Three-time IndyCar champion Alex Palou (who has won the past two titles for Ganassi) will join for the endurance rounds along with Honda factory driver Kakunoshin Ohta at Daytona.
Shank retained many of his key sports car employees despite the one-year layoff and told NBC Sports before the 2024 season that he still believed “we’re the best team on the pit lane right now … we’re a turn-key championship-level team.”
If MSR can prove that with a fourth Rolex 24 victory, it’ll rank among the most redemptive stories in the event’s 63-year history.
How will lineup changes impact GTP, other categories?
Winning a premier class title is no guarantee of lineup continuity in IMSA: The past three top prototype champions have made driver changes entering the next season.
The latest is with Porsche Penske Motorsport’s No. 7 963, which won the 2024 Grand Touring Prototype championship with Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron.
Nasr returns but will be paired with Nick Tandy, who moves over from the No. 6 Porsche. That entry now will be piloted by Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell, who returns to full time in IMSA after racing last year in the FIA World Endurance Championship (it’s a reunion for a pair who won the 2022 GTD Pro championship and a 2022 Rolex 24 thriller).
Virtually every GTP team will have driver tweaks at Daytona. The most notable is BMW M Team Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, which returns only Philipp Eng from its two BMW M Hybrid V8 lineups (and adds Formula One veteran Kevin Magnussen). Earl Bamber has joined the No. 31 Action Express Cadillac in place of series champion Pipo Derani, who left to help Hyundai develop an LMDh car for next year.
The lineup moves will cascade into LMP2, where Cameron, a four-time champion, has joined AO Racing as one of several well-known drivers in the category at Daytona. LMP2 will have a major IndyCar presence with Sebastien Bourdais (Tower Motorsports), Colton Herta (Crowdstrike) and Pietro Fittipaldi and Callum Ilott at Pratt Miller Motorsports.
Could Trackhouse make a winning splash in its debut?
Disruption while building a dynasty has been the mantra at Trackhouse, whose founder Justin Marks has overseen a NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 berth, a foray into MotoGP and a plan to run the Indy 500.
The Rolex 24 at Daytona will be another opportunity for the upstart team (which is barely four years old) to shock the racing world. Trackhouse has assembled a dynamic lineup for its No. 91 Corvette Z06 GT3.R, which will have a legitimate shot at contending for a GTD Pro class victory despite being a one-off entry.
It starts with the pairing of three-time Supercars champions Shane van Gisbergen, who will move full time into the NASCAR Cup Series this season, and Scott McLaughlin, the 2024 Indy 500 pole-sitter who has seven IndyCar victories for Team Penske. The Kiwis will be joined by rising star Connor Zilisch, who won in his Rolex 24 debut last year at 17 and later added his first Xfinity Series victory, and past Rolex 24 and 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Ben Keating, who also will race in LMP2 at Daytona (the automotive dealer is one of the most well-regarded Bronze-rated drivers in IMSA).
Though he’s five years removed from his last Rolex 24, van Gisbergen will be making his seventh start in the season opener and proved in the inaugural Chicago Street Race that he can parachute into victory lane with little warmup.
McLaughlin, who will be making his GT debut in IMSA, is optimistic about contending in an entry that Trackhouse is fielding jointly with TF Sport (a team with multiple GT and prototype titles).
“Connor Zilisch is a superstar over here now, and then Ben Keating is probably the best bronze you can have,” McLaughlin said. “We’ve got a good shot, but it all depends on (balance of performance) and all that sort of stuff. I have full confidence in GM and Corvette that we can come with a really good package and give these European manufacturers a good go in our land.”
Will two reunions rejuvenate Wayne Taylor Racing?
Switching manufacturers in sports cars typically is an arduous lift of adapting to new cars, engineering personnel and software processes. But in leaving Acura after four seasons, Wayne Taylor Racing should have a smoother transition with moving its two GTP cars to new (but familiar) surroundings with Cadillac.
Aside from its 2021-24 run with Honda, WTR has spent the bulk of its existence aligned with General Motors brands and enjoyed some of its greatest success with Cadillac. In its 2017 debut with the luxury brand, WTR won the Rolex 24 and the next four races en route to the premier prototype championship. Its streak of three consecutive Rolex 24 crowns began with Cadillac victories in 2019 and ‘20.
Kamui Kobayashi was a linchpin of those triumphs, and he will return to WTR with Cadillac this month after a five-year absence from the team in which he ran Toyota’s WEC team, made his NASCAR Cup debut and nearly won a third consecutive Rolex 24 in 2021 (while teamed with Jimmie Johnson).
But some of Kobayashi’s greatest moments came at WTR. He memorably dueled with Juan Pablo Montoya as a Daytona rookie in ’19, quickly building a reputation as aggressive, bold and indifferent to the controversy that sometimes accompanies the extraordinary moves his talent affords.
The Japanese star has a freakish knack for touring Daytona’s 12-turn, 3.56-mile road course (particularly in the tricky Le Mans Chicane) at a blistering pace while also angering his rivals. It’s been three years since Kobayashi’s most recent Rolex 24 start, and there should be pent-up brilliance that will be a treat to watch — and at a greater volume.
With Alex Lynn out because of an illness, WTR has elected to use a three-driver lineup on its No. 40 V-Series.R between Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz and Kobayashi. If the split is roughly even, that could mean eight hours behind the wheel per driver.
Will Le Mans Chicane alterations have a major effect?
There were good intentions for the overhaul of an action-packed section of the Daytona International Speedway road course -- but the changes were made independent of sports cars.
After bouncing over the Le Mans Chicane curbing and going airborne through the grass, Ryan Preece flipped 10 times in the NASCAR Cup Series race on Aug. 26, 2023. The terrifying crash prompted a major safety review by NASCAR (which also owns Daytona) that resulted in removing the grass and raising the curbing through the famous left-right-left sector off the backstretch.
The changes were completed after the 2024 Daytona 500, so their introduction to Rolex 24 drivers came during a test last month with mixed feedback. The Le Mans Chicane has gotten slower and narrowed to one lane with the larger curbs raising the likelihood of damaging cars (it previously was possible to survive curb contact and squeeze through, particularly for GTs).
Considering it’s been used as a passing zone for prototypes zipping past GTs, an inability to race two wide through The Le Mans Chicane could trigger some massive shunts (and airborne cars). But it’ll be hard to know how well drivers can adapt to the changes until the Jan. 25-26 race.
