Starting a new season with a 24 hour race always feels like the ultimate challenge of car and driver but in many ways it’s the best scenario. It’s great to spend a good chunk of time with the team and teammates and it also demands maximum from the car whilst testing the developments made since the last race.
In reality we’re always looking for improvements, but leading in to Daytona we have focused heavily on the reliability of certain aspects of the car. If you look back at 2024 – which was the competition debut of the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R – although we finished the race and took the flag in fifth place having led quite a few laps, we were often on the back foot and at one point had to fix a cracked oil tank. This year, despite changing some wiring in the engine bay mid race (opting to undertake a brake change at the same time) and going a lap down, it was an otherwise largely uneventful race for us. The reality of racing at Daytona in IMSA is that the objective has to be to arrive in the closing stages of the race on the lead lap then extract everything that’s left to see where you can finish.
One aspect that is new to GTD is the inclusion of torque sensors on the driving axles. Whilst it’s well understood by the team, there is always the possibility for abnormal ’spikes’ so the work spent since Petit Le Mans in ensuring that we maximise performance without falling foul of the permitted limits was put to good test and ultimately the Pratt Miller Motorsports guys produced a compliant racecar.
From a personal point of view, I really enjoyed qualifying on the Thursday. It’s always fun to feel the car on low fuel and I was happy enough with the lap that put us fourth on the grid. Likewise it was fun to end the race. I hustled the Ford Mustang as best I could to the end but they just had a bit too much straight line speed for us in the end and second was the best we could do. Having completed 275 laps in total over the 24 hours I got plenty of seat time and for the team and me personally we can head to Sebring in March in a strong position to push forward.
The next round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on Saturday, March 15.
