With Felipe Nasr again leading the charge, “The Captain” has another crown in the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Nasr outdueled Porsche Penske Motorsport teammate Matt Campbell to take the checkered flag in the No. 7 Porsche 963 for the second consecutive year. The Brazlilian won by 1.335 seconds over Tom Blomqvist. Campbell finished third as the last Grand Touring Prototype driver on the lead lap.
Nasr’s stiffest challenge came from Campbell as they battled hard and nearly made contact multiple times while swapping the lead late in the race. Nasr took first for the final time on Lap 768 with about 22 minutes remaining, and the Brazilian led the final 14 laps.
RESULTS: Click here for overall l By category
“I like winning, that’s all, and that’s what I’m here for,” Nasr told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “I’m proud I did it again back to back. Incredible work by everybody at Porsche Penske Motorsport. The two cars run very strong all the way to the end, and hey, it’s never over ‘tll it’s over. So I did everything I could behind the wheel to get ourselves set up.
“And it’s just an incredible, incredible feeling. I just cried in the car. I don’t know what to say. Incredible.”
Roger Penske now has consecutive victories in the Rolex 24 after his iconic Team Penske braved a 55-year winless drought in the sports car endurance classic. In the past three years, Penske’s auto racing empire has three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championships (Joey Logano in 2022, ’24, Ryan Blaney in ’23), consecutive Indy 500 wins (Joef Newgarden in 2023-24) and now back-to-back victories in the Rolex 24.
Penske later told reporters he “didn’t like that, but we’ve just got to let them do that” about the battle between Nasr and Campbell.
“We didn’t talk to them about not racing each other, but obviously these guys are racers and fortunately we didn’t get into trouble,” Penske, who turns 88 next month, told Lee about the closing battle between Campbell and Nasr.
“Terrific job by the whole team, when you think about all the drivers we had, they ran strong all day. And the cars, this Porsche car we have has just been amazing. And to think we did it two years in a row, it’s a credit to all the people here, all the people from Germany and from Porsche and our team here. So we’ve got one organization, and now we’ve been able to say we did it again.”\
Porsche captured its record-extending 20th overall victory in the 24-hour race at Daytona.
It’s the 11th IMSA victory for Nasr, who co-drove with Nick Tandy (23 IMSA victories) and Laurens Vanthoor (11 wins).
Tandy, 40, became the first driver in history with overall wins in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24-hour races at Nurburgring and Spa.
“It’s one of the biggest sporting events in the world, and we just emerged victorious,” Tandy said. “I had a chance here to win before in class, but the overall is something different, and it’s something that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. Luckily I got to share it with these two legends. To win all the four major 24-hour races, outright. One would be incredible, but all four … “
Vanthoor won his first Rolex 24 at Daytona on the heels of winning the World Endurance Championship with Porsche last year.
“I’ve been trying this for a while and came close a lot of times and I don’t know where to put words,” said Vanthoor, who nearly won the GTD Pro category in 2022. “I’ve been dreaming to drive this car, to drive for Penske, to drive for Porsche, to be in the chrome trailer, and a couple months ago i became world champion and now today we won the Rolex 24.”
The 24-hour race boiled down to a shootout between the Porsche cars after the final restart with 38 minutes remaining in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Running second ahead of Nasr, Dries Vanthoor drove deep into Turn 1 and rear-ended Campbell with his No. 24 BMW M Team RLL BMW M V8 Hybrid. The contact left Vanthoor nursing the car back to the pits with a left-front tire rub. After qualifying first and giving BMW its first GTP pole position, Vanthoor finished a lap down in fourth place, followed by Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac.
At 781 laps, the race covered 2,780.360 miles around the 12-turn, 3.56-mile road course with 14 yellow flags. There were 37,887 laps turned among the 61 cars in the field. Click here for updates from the first 23 hours of the race.
Follow along for live coverage of the 63rd Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Winners in other categories:
—LMP2: No. 8 Tower Motorsports ORECA LMP2 with Job van Uitert (two IMSA wins), Sebastien Bourdais (finishing driver, 14 victories), Sebastian Alvarez (first win), John Farano (six wins).
It’s the third Rolex 24 victory for Bourdais, who has won the overall, LMP2 and GT.
“It wasn’t the most traditional way to win it but what a day,” Bourdais told NBC Sports’ Kim Coon. “I mean we were in this thing all night long, and then it looked like it was slipping away from us during the day a bit. Then we got in the lead, and we lost the lead, and then they tangled at the front and seemed to really want to give it to us, so we’ll take it.”
Bourdais said he purposefully slowed toward the finish while trying to maintain the lead because he didn’t have the fuel for an extra lap beyond the overall winner. He benefited from another LMP2 contender sustaining damage in a crash that happened just in front of his car.
“Beche just torpedoed Palou,” Bourdais said. “I was like well if nobody wants to win it, we’ll take it. It was the most improbable one, because we definitely were not the strongest, but those races are never won or lost until the checkered flag, and that’s another reminder. I’m really happy for Tower Motorsports and (team owner) John (Farano) who’s been after that Rolex for a while.
“It wasn’t very close, but I think the initial target was wrong so we thankfully saved a heck of a lot more (fuel). Then we had a 40-second gap, so there was really no pressure. My spotter was on the radio telling me, literally you cannot go slow enough! It was the least climatic way to win it, but we’ll take it.”
—GTD Pro: No. 65 Ford Mustang GT3 with Dennis Olsen (finishing driver, two wins), Frederic Vervisch (first win), Christopher Mies (two wins)
The victory caps an impressive turnaround for Ford Multimatic Motorsports, which returned to the GT category last year with lackluster results. “We had a tough year last year and coming here to Daytona, we had a faultless race, no damage until the end,” Olsen told NBC Sports’ Matt Yocum. “And when that last restart went, I was just gonna go all in. I didn’t care. It was win or nothing, bin it or win it.”
—GTD: No. 13 AWA Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R with Marvin Kirchhofer (first win), Lars Kern (two wins), Matthew Bell (finishing driver, two wins), Orey Fidani (first win).
Bell turned in a heroic driver after falling ill the night before the green flag.
“It means absolutely everything to me, my whole team and my teammates,” Bell told NBC Sports’ Dillon Welch. “Everybody on this team works so hard, to think where we were last year and how far we’ve come to now. It’s so much hard work from the minute the checkered flag fell at Petit Le Mans. No one took a rest, no one took a break. It’s been 24 /7 since then to get a car that’s capable of winning the Daytona 24 hours and AWA gave the four of us a car. We went out, we had some tough battles. IMSA is the hardest championship in the world. So thank you to the competition for making it this hard and thank you to AWA and my teammates for helping me get it over the line.
“That’s one beat up Chevrolet Corvette, but they make them tough up in Detroit. So yeah, fantastic, fantastic result.”
ROLEX 24 AT DAYTONA RESULTS
Fastest laps by driver
Fastest laps by driver after race (over the weekend)
Fastest laps by driver and class after race
Fastest lap sequence
Leader sequence
Lap chart
Race analysis by lap
Stint analysis
Time cards
Pit stop time cards
Best sector times
Race distance and average speed
Flags analysis
Weather report