Ten Canadian drivers took part in the 64th Rolex 24 at Daytona, as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship opened its season with its marquee event on the Daytona International Speedway road course. Here’s a rundown of key results, with race recaps below.
GTP Class
Class Winner: No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport (Felipe Nasr, Julien Andlauer, Laurin Heinrich)
Second-Place: No. 31 Cadillac Whelen (Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber, Frederik Vesti, Connor Zilisch)
Third-Place: No. 24 BMW M Team WRT (Sheldon van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, Robin Frijns, Rene Rast)
Canadians:
Roman De Angelis 10th (No. 23 ASTON MARTIN THOR Team, with co-drivers Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas, Marco Sorensen)
LMP2 Class
Class Winner: No. 04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR (George Kurtz, Alex Quinn, Toby Sowery, Malthe Jakobsen)
Second-Place: No. 43 Inter Europol Competition (Tom Dillmann, Bijoy Garg, Antonio Felix da Costa, Jeremy Clarke)
Third-Place: No. 343 Inter Europol Competition (Jakub Smiechowski, George Kolovos, Nolan Siegel, Nick Cassidy)
Canadians:
Parker Thompson & Misha Goikhberg 6th (No. 52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen, with co-drivers Ben Keating, Harry Tincknell)
John Farano 8th (No. 8 Tower Motorsports, with co-drivers Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastian Alvarez, Kyffin Simpson)
Phil Fayer 10th (No. 2 United Autosports USA, with co-drivers Ben Hanley, Hunter McElrea, Mikkel Jensen)
Chris Cumming 11th (No. 73 Pratt Miller Motorsports, with co-drivers Pietro Fittipaldi, Manuel Espirito Santo, Enzo Fittipaldi)
Tobi Lutke 12th (No. 11 TDS Racing, with co-drivers Mathias Beche, David Heinemeier Hansson, Charles Milesi)
GTD Pro Class
Class Winner: No. 1 Paul Miller Racing (Neil Verhagen, Connor De Phillippi, Max Hesse, Dan Harper)
Second-Place: No. 75 75 Express (Kenny Habul, Maro Engel, Will Power, Chaz Mostert)
Third-Place: No. 48 WINWARD RACING (Scott Noble, Jason Hart, Maxime Martin, Luca Stolz)
Canadians:
James Hinchcliffe 6th (No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports, with co-drivers Andrea Caldarelli, Sandy Mitchell, Mirko Bortolotti)
GTD Class
Class Winner: No. 57 WINWARD RACING (Russell Ward, Philip Ellis, Indy Dontje, Lucas Auer)
Second-Place: No. 44 Magnus Racing (John Potter, Spencer Pumpelly, Nicki Thiim, Madison Snow)
Third-Place: No. 27 Heart of Racing Team (Tom Gamble, Dudu Barrichello, Zacharie Robichon, Mattia Drudi)
Canadians:
Zacharie Robichon 3rd (No. 27 Heart of Racing Team, with co-drivers Tom Gamble, Dudu Barrichello, Mattia Drudi)
Orey Fidani 4th (No. 13 13 Autosport, with co-drivers Matthew Bell, Lars Kern, Ben Green)
GTP & LMP2 Recap
By Holly Cain/IMSA
Add yet another historic victory to Roger Penske’s iconic career of high achievement. Team Penske kicked off its 60th anniversary season Sunday with the overall victory in the 64th Rolex 24 At Daytona – Penske’s third straight win in the world-renowned sports car race. It featured an all-time Rolex 24 record attendance at the Daytona International Speedway road course to kick off the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.
Brazilian Felipe Nasr drove the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 across the finish line 1.569 seconds ahead of Brit Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R after a particularly spirited battle through the final hour between the two. The No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 was third, 21 seconds behind the winner, in the team’s first race running the IMSA BMW GTP program.
“The driving that he’s done for us and at the end there, probably one of the best drives I’ve seen,” Penske said of Nasr. “You know for our 60th it’s a big deal, and here at Daytona, to have three wins here is certainly special. Starts out the year the right way.”
The veteran Nasr’s work now equals and follows on the heels of fellow Brazilian Helio Castroneves’s three consecutive overall wins (2021-23) at Daytona’s famous 3.56-mile road course. Peter Gregg also achieved the feat when he won three straight in 1973, ’75 and ’76 (there was no race in ’74). Both Nasr’s co-drivers, German Laurin Heinrich and Frenchman Julien Andlauer, won their first Rolex 24s and Andlauer achieved his first WeatherTech Championship win of any kind.
Plaudits were earned for team and manufacturer as well. Team Penske tied Chip Ganassi Racing and Wayne Taylor Racing with its third consecutive win and 46th in any IMSA class. Porsche brought home its 21st overall Rolex 24 triumph, the most of any manufacturer.
“Three in a row, it’s just a very special day – I dreamed of that,’’ said Nasr. “We had a battle all the way to the end with the (No.) 31. … I was just trying all I could because I know in these final hours everyone is using everything they have inside the car, and the Cadillac was a strong car.
“The field has such good drivers,’’ Nasr said. “I have to acknowledge that the level of this race is getting higher and higher in this GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) class. It was pure racing. I used everything I had.”
Sunny skies and 70-degree temperatures – warmer-than-usual Rolex 24 weather – straddled a heavy overnight fog at the track that brought out a full-course caution flag for six hours, 33 minutes – the longest in Rolex 24 history.
When racing resumed after the fog just after 7 a.m. ET, the action picked up accordingly. The Penske Porsches battled closely with the BMWs and Cadillacs for the overall lead and, as is so typical of this legendary race, the final hours fed high drama.
Although the Nos. 7 and 6 Penske Porsches truly dominated the event statistically, combining to lead 521 of the 705 laps (74 percent of the race), they had to fend off a strong two-car BMW effort and a powerful Cadillac showing that also included a pair of Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing cars in addition to the runner-up No. 31 Cadillac Whelen entry – as well as a persistent push from the two-car Acura Michael Shank Racing w/Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06 effort that claimed pole position. Nine of the 11 GTP cars led laps.
Twice in the final hour, Aitken was able to pull within less than a half-second of Nasr, pulling alongside in one particular attempt to pass heading into Turn 1. But Nasr was on his game, negotiating the 60-car field throughout the race and repelling Aitken’s attempts to overtake in the final 60 minutes.
“The guys all around from the team in the pit box to my teammates did a fantastic job to get us back into a position at the end of the race,’’ said Aitken, who was vying to put the No. 31 Cadillac in victory lane for a third straight WeatherTech Championship race dating to the final two of 2025. “The Porsches were very strong all race, very impressive. We tried to challenge them best we could and I got close to them a few times.
“Just really, really heartbreaking but we had great runs and I’m proud of that,” Aitken added.
“I had a couple moments where I stuck my nose in there, but it was always from just a bit further back just trying to make something happen. I never got a super great run on them. I was trying to find an opening here and there, and (there was) a fine line between making a gap open up and causing a bit of an accident.”
The Rolex 24 is the first of five IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races on the 2026 calendar. By leading at all four junctures when endurance points were awarded, the No. 7 Porsche has opened a significant lead over the competition.
LMP2: CrowdStrike Strikes It Big with LMP2 Victory
CrowdStrike Racing by APR claimed victory in a very competitive 13-car Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class, overcoming a first-lap incident seconds into the 24-hour race to regroup and win.
It went a long way to avenge a photo-finish runner-up showing for the team’s ORECA LMP2 07 two years ago at Daytona. That memory, when the No. 04 lost by 0.016 seconds, was seared into the memory of team owner and Bronze-rated co-driver George Kurtz. The No. 04 also finished second a year later, with Kurtz and two of his 2026 co-drivers – Malthe Jakobsen and Toby Sowery – on board then. Along with fourth driver Alex Quinn, all were elated to nail down the first Rolex 24 win for each of them.
The No. 04 recovered from that Lap 1 incident Saturday – collected in a multi-car melee heading into Turn 1 – but went on to lead often and convincingly. Its healthy 5.590-second win over the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA marked the largest margin of victory in the four classes competing in the 60-car field. Inter Europol’s second entry, the No. 343 ORECA, completed the LMP2 class podium.
“Fantastic car and it was great in the end,” Kurtz said. “We had some adversity in the beginning, the first turn. We were innocent bystanders and got cleaned out a bit, but the team got us back on track and we never gave up. Really this has been a lifelong dream and we finally got it done.”
The CrowdStrike drivers acknowledged that the LMP2 class was particularly competitive this weekend. Surviving close calls and rebounding from contact was absolutely part of the winning formula this year. The No. 04 led 223 laps, including 111 of the last 120 when it counted most.
“Watching George get wiped out at the start, LMP2 I’d argue is probably the toughest class in the IMSA field,” Sowery said. “Everybody is in the same car and it’s all about maximizing every other thing possible. Even if things are done as well as they can be on the day by the team, it doesn’t always go your way. For me, it’s about experiencing grit, but we have a great lineup and so we should be one of the teams on the beneficiary of that.”
The No. 99 AO Racing ORECA, which led 298 laps before finishing fifth, took the LMP2 Michelin Endurance Cup top honors on the day.
GTD Pro & GTD Recap
By John Oreovicz/IMSA
Starting from the rear of the Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) field at the 64th Rolex 24 At Daytona turned out to be a minor setback for Paul Miller Racing.
Neil Verhagen’s front-row qualifying effort in the No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO for the classic IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship endurance race was disallowed after the car was found to have camber in excess of the permitted limit.
But despite starting 15th and last, Verhagen and his co-drivers Connor De Phillippi, Max Hesse, and Dan Harper prevailed to win by 2.223 seconds over the No. 75 Mercedes-AMG GT3 fielded by 75 Express and driven by Kenny Habul, Maro Engel, Australian Supercars champion Chaz Mostert, and IndyCar star Will Power.
It was class victory No. 2 for Paul Miller Racing at the Rolex 24, the other coming in GTD in 2020 with a Lamborghini Huracán GT3. It was also PMR’s second consecutive GTD PRO win in WeatherTech Championship competition, as Hesse, Harper and De Phillippi shared PMR’s then-No. 48 BMW to cap off the 2025 season at Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Starting from the back of a race is always a daunting prospect, but the PMR drivers weren’t too fazed because they knew they would have 24 hours to work with.
“If we were going to get disqualified from one, this would be the best one to get it done,” said Verhagen, who was victorious at Daytona in his third Rolex 24 start. “Obviously, we were a bit discouraged about losing the points for qualifying, but I don’t think we felt we were starting off on the wrong note or something like that.
“We just knew that we needed to work like a team and that’s what we did. We pulled off a flawless race.”
De Phillippi also earned his second Rolex 24 class win (2019 in GT Le Mans in a BMW M8 GTE), while Hesse and Harper took home the coveted Rolex Daytona timepiece awarded as a trophy for the first time.
The No. 1 car moved into contention early in the fifth hour and was leading in GTD PRO just prior to halfway when the race went into a six and a half-hour holding pattern under caution due to heavy fog. The sequence of pit stops during the marathon safety car period pretty much put the PMR BMW back where it started, but it took Verhagen and Hesse just two hours to move back to the front of the field when racing resumed shortly before the 18-hour mark.
They encountered one final obstacle when the PMR pit lost radio contact with Harper in the final hour of the race.
“The last hour, my heartbeat was going crazy – emotions were flowing,” Verhagen related. “Dan didn’t have any communication with us, but he handled it perfectly. There isn’t anyone I would trust more in that situation. We had our guy in and he delivered.”
“The guys did a great job on all the pit stops and we got the track position, which to be honest was really key for us this weekend,” Harper added. “We knew it was crucial to get that track position for the final stint, and the boys pulled it off.”
The PMR group’s closest pursuers were not able to mount a serious challenge in the two-plus hours of green-flag racing that concluded the race. The No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsport Corvette Z06 GT3.R led nearly a third of the race (188 of 662 laps) but fell to seventh when Nico Varrone was pushed off-track by James Calado in the No. 033 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO just after the final restart.
That put Manthey’s No. 911 ‘Grello’ Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) out front for an hour, but a difficult final stint for DTM ace Thomas Preining left the car running fifth at the flag, just behind the rallying No. 4 Corvette.
Their collective woes allowed Mercedes-AMG to claim the final podium places, with the No. 75 car second and Scott Noble, Jason Hart, Maxime Martin, and Luca Stolz teaming for a third-place finish in the first GTD PRO race for defending IMSA GTD class champion Winward Racing’s new No. 48 entry.
“We did everything we could – there was nothing else we could do,” said Habul, who owns and operates the runner-up 75 Express team in addition to being part of the driver lineup. “It feels great to be on the podium after not finishing here the last five years, and we’ll just have to try to get one better.”
GTD: Winward’s Daytona Mastery Continues
Phillip Ellis called his late-race battle with Nicki Thiim for the lead and the ultimate Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class victory at the Rolex 24 At Daytona “a little stressful.”
Ellis, in the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, fought door-to-door with Thiim’s No. 44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin GT3 EVO through Daytona International Speedway’s famous tri-oval with 10 minutes remaining in the annual 24-hour endurance contest. Slight contact between the cars sent both cars into lurid slides, caught masterfully by the drivers.
Ellis maintained a slim advantage under braking into Turn 1 and fought off another concentrated attack from Thiim before finally pulling away to a 1.367-second advantage over Thiim at the checkered flag.
Ellis shared his winning car with Russell Ward, Indy Dontje and Lucas Auer while Thiim sought to deliver a win in the Magnus Aston he shared with past Rolex 24 class winners John Potter, Spencer Pumpelly (who entered with a race-high 24 starts, although not consecutive) and team newcomer Madison Snow.
Tom Gamble, Zacharie Robichon, Mattia Drudi, and Dudu Barrichello (the 24-year-old son of former Formula 1 driver Rubens Barrichello) claimed third place in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.
It was Winward Racing’s third GTD class win at the Rolex in the last six years, the others coming in 2021 and ’24. Making the day even better for the team owned by Russell Ward and his father, Bryce, their GTD PRO class entry finished third on its WeatherTech Championship debut.
“Honestly, these are my four sons, not just Russell,” said Bryce Ward, who participates as a driver for Winward Racing’s IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge effort. “It’s been such a pleasure to drive and work with these guys and also watch them be so successful in IMSA.”
But the talking point after the race was the intense duel between Thiim and Ellis, which brought the record Rolex 24 crowd to its feet.
“It was super-tight with Nicki, and to be fair, I think I just misjudged it a little bit,” said Ellis, a 12-time winner in IMSA competition. “I’m happy that we both continued and nothing bigger happened. Then we put on a good fight and a good show. Obviously, I’m super stoked that we came out on top. I can’t thank my teammates enough, who did an outstanding job this week and the entire race. The car was a rocket ship.”
Ellis only received a warning for incident responsibility after the close call with Thiim and kept on trucking. Pressed for details about the exciting dice, he responded:
“It was a good hard-fought battle between the two of us,” he said. “To be honest, once I got by him, I thought I would just drive away, and I was very surprised he stuck with me so much. I don’t know whether he found pace or did something when he was behind me, but I didn’t expect him to fight back so hard in the last 15 minutes. It made my life very hard. At that point I think I would have preferred being outside the car watching rather than being in it!
“I spoke to Nicki, and I think everything is good,” Ellis added. “It was a hard-fought battle, very on edge, but good motorsport.”
Both class winners also won the Michelin Endurance Cup portion of the event, scoring the most points at the four awarded intervals at six-, 12-, 18- and 24 hours.
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship resumes March 18-21 with the 74th annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring at Sebring International Raceway.