Acura renews its championship title in the 24 Hours of Daytona and adds its third consecutive year as the best car on the Florida circuit, after the victory of Wayne Taylor Racing in 2021 and those of Meyer Shank Racing in 2022 and 2023, the latter with Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud at the wheel. Change of third confirmed in a test that Cadillac dominated between 2017 and 2020 (with Fernando Alonso in his crew in 2019). In GTD Prothe triumph had a Spanish flavour, with Juncadella in first position of his class followed by Antonio GarcÃa, second.
They lived some 24 hours decided in the last minutes, in a duel between the Acura number 60 of the Meyer Shank Racing, the 10 of the Konica Minolta and the Cadillac LMDh of ganassi. The four prototypes survived the typical problems of endurance racing, and suffered by the other cars: the bmw 25 stalled in the first 60 minutes and took hours to get back on track; the Porsche 7 had to be reset in the first hours of the race and undergo a battery change in its hybrid system; 6 spun and they had to repair part of the bodywork when he was leading and the Cadillac 31 had suspension failures. The two German firms suffered from reliability problems in their return to the resistance with the prototypes, although the 963 showed a little more rhythm than the M Hybrid V8.
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With a good part of the opponents ruled out, the defending champions endured the harassment of the two Cadillacs and the other Acura, the number 10. As the end of the event approached, the distance increased and was only reduced by the yellow flags . First the V-LMDh number 2 showed signs of weakness, and the number 1 could also do little despite going close to the car with Japanese roots (Acura is the luxury car division of the Honda brand in the United States). Nor did the Acura 10 hold up, and the 60 confirmed the predictions that they gave him as a favorite at the finish line.
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In the category GTD Pro there was Spanish color throughout the day and by the head they were always seen antonio garcia with his Corvette, dani juncadella with the Mercedes Y Alex Riberas with the Aston Martin. The latter lost his options in the last leg of the test. A problem that kept him stopped in the box for several minutes forced him to lose laps with the leaders and leave the fight for victory, in which the Lexus 14 was fully involved together with the two Spaniards, separated by a handful of seconds and a few tenths when entering the last two hours of the race.
It was like a sprint race with 120 minutes to go dealing with traffic, yellow flags (one momentarily incorporated the Lamborghini Huracan 63 in the lead) and adjusting strategies in a frantic fight. The Mercedes 79 of the team of Juncadella, his second victory in a 24-hour race after winning last year in Spa, and left Antonio GarcÃa, who was looking for his fourth victory in Florida, with honey on his lips. He had to settle for second place.
In GTD Pro, Miguel Molina he could not complete the 24 after suffering an accident in the last half hour with his Ferrari after a restart after the penultimate yellow flag of the day.