Daytona Thursday Notebook

Photo: Jonathan Grace

***IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teams unloaded on Thursday morning in preparation for this weekend’s Roar Before the Rolex 24 official pre-season test. Drivers, meanwhile, spent the day going through various media day activities at the Daytona 500 Club, which made for a productive first official day of the IMSA season.

***All 61 entered cars are now on-site, with the No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo arriving on Thursday afternoon after being prepped in a workshop in Orlando. A Mercedes-AMG spokesperson told Sportscar365 that the car was originally due to go to team owner Kenny Habul’s outpost in Mooresville, N.C. for the installation of IMSA-specific components but was delayed upon arrival in Atlanta due to the recent snowstorm.

***Riley has become the service provider for Automobili Lamborghini Squadra Corse’s GTP program. The Bill Riley-led operation took delivery of a Lamborghini SC63 chassis only last Tuesday and completed a successful shakedown at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, S.C. earlier this week.

***Bill Riley told Sportscar365 that it’s been a “big effort” between his team and Lamborghini Squadra Corse over the last two weeks to be ready for the Roar.

***Lamborghini’s full factory effort is so far committed to the Michelin Endurance Cup races this year.

***IMSA has scratched its dedicated ‘Targeted Performance Testing’ for GTD Pro and GTD manufacturers this weekend in a recently revised weekend schedule that has seen the addition of a Bronze driver-only session on Sunday from 2:30-4 p.m. ET.

***Sportscar365 understands that the sanctioning body will instead take torque sensor data from all on-track sessions this weekend to dictate any potential Balance of Performance changes between the the test and race week, as it has done in recent years to the GTP class.

***An increased presence from California-based MagCanica Motorsports, the company that produces the IMSA-enforced torque sensors in GTP, GTD Pro and GTD, are on-site this weekend. The same units are also used in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

***Wayne Taylor Racing is utilizing a brand-new Cadillac V-Series.R chassis for its No. 40 car this weekend, while the No. 10 entry is the same chassis that Chip Ganassi Racing took to victory in last year’s season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans.

***WTR returns to a Dallara-chassied prototype for the first time since 2020 when it was also last affiliated with Cadillac.

***The team has hired ex-Red Bull Racing Formula 1 performance engineer Blake Hinsey as its new race engineer for the No. 40 Cadillac this year. Hinsey, who worked with Max Verstappen, most recently engineered the Lamborghini Iron Lynx LMDh program.

***Filipe Albuquerque revealed that he still had a balaclava and driving gloves at Dallara’s simulator facility from more than five years ago when he had driven Action Express Racing’s Cadillac DPi-V.R prior to his switch to Wayne Taylor Racing in 2021. “We just picked up where we left off,” he said.

***Pfaff Motorsports completed a shakedown of its brand-new Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 at Circuit Florida, a private country club-style facility in Auburndale, Fla., prior to arriving at Daytona according to team manager Steve Bortolotti, who credited fellow Lamborghini GTD squads Wayne Taylor Racing and Forte Racing for their assistance in helping the Canadian squad get up to speed with the car.

***Bortolotti told Sportscar365: “They were very forthcoming from information. They had a test in December that they allowed me to attend and shadow. They made my life easy, and so did Lamborghini, obviously. That was huge. I don’t know how we would have ever made it if they didn’t do that. Tons of credit to those guys for being as welcoming of us to come in as they were.”

***Pfaff has yet to confirm its full-time driver lineup although Sportscar365 understands that an announcement from Lamborghini is set to be made on Saturday, with two of the four drivers in the car for the Rolex 24 understood to be the designated season-long pilots.

***DXDT Racing has yet to determine Robert Wickens’ co-driver for the sprint portion of the GTD season according to program manager Bryan Sellers, who confirmed to Sportscar365 that the first straight-line testing of Wickens’ hand controls is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at an undisclosed Florida airfield using a Pratt Miller test car.

***Laurens Vanthoor, who is set in the No. 7 Penske Porsche 963 for Daytona, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and Motul Petit Le Mans, hinted to Sportscar365 that he could make a one-off IMSA GT appearance later this season.

***Vanthoor, who was named Sportscar365’s 2024 Driver of the Year, is hopeful of also contesting several other GT races this year in addition to defending his WEC Hypercar title, including the possibility of the Nürburgring 24 and CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, along with a return to the FIA GT World Cup in Macau.

***Sportscar365 understands that Vasser Sullivan was set to utilize a three-driver lineup for its No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3 “quite late into the day” until a shuffle after a driver prospect failed to materialize in the No. 12 car. Kyle Kirkwood is listed to drive both the team’s GTD Pro and GTD entries in the race.

***Defending GTD champion and Rolex 24 class winner Philip Ellis believes the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos could be at a disadvantage, particularly at Daytona, in the debut of the mandated torque sensors on all WeatherTech Championship GT machinery.

***Ellis said: “We have a bit of a disadvantage with the Mercedes. We were not in the WEC where they already have the system running, the other manufacturers. It’s a new learning game for us, some catch up to do. It will be very tough but I think everybody on the team have a good group of people and a good engineering team as well that will help us get there.”

***Reigning LMP2 class champion Nick Boulle is currently only confirmed for the Rolex 24 in the No. 2 United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibson, but told Sportscar365 that he’s “hoping we can put together some more races” with the Anglo-American team.

***Boulle, who won the LMP2 title with Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, said it’s “highly likely” he’ll take his 24 Hours of Le Mans automatic invite to the Polish squad. “We’re getting there,” he said. “We should have an announcement pretty soon.”

***IMSA has confirmed that the top three GTP and GTD Pro cars will be impounded overnight following the conclusion of the Rolex 24, in order to conduct a “more thorough and detailed inspection in a “controlled location” beginning on Mon. Jan. 27. The sanctioning body expects to release the cars by. 3 p.m. ET later that day.

***IMSA’s end-of-year sanctioned test, which was originally scheduled to return to December for this year, has moved back up by one month and is now set to occur at Daytona on Nov. 14-16 at the request of competitors.

***A number of people in the IMSA paddock have been affected by the Los Angeles fires, including Vasser Sullivan’s Townsend Bell, who lost two houses. Bell is slate to pull double duty between the No. 14 Lexus in GTD Pro and his NBC Sports broadcasting commitments.

***The Honda family of companies donated $1 million in disaster relief funds to the American Red Cross to support the tens of thousands impacted by the wildfires. It announced a doubling of its initial $500,000 pledge on Wednesday.

***WeatherTech Championship track action kicks off at 11 a.m. ET tomorrow for a one-hour and 15-minute scheduled session, followed by two hours of testing action in the afternoon, beginning at 3 p.m.

***There will also be test sessions for Michelin Pilot Challenge and practice for this weekend’s pair of season-opening VP Racing SportsCar Challenge races, which are set for Saturday and Sunday.