Jacen's Rants
VP Racing SportsCar Challenge Race Review - 2025 Daytona 1 & 2
January 19, 2025
The Rolex 24 is my favorite endurance race of the year, and this is effectively the beginning of the Daytona weekend. The SportCar challenge has always been about learning multi-class racing, and the introduction of the new GT3-spec GTDX class in between the GT4-based GSX and the top-class LMP3s only adds to that goal. Let's take a look at how the first major event in American motorsports shaped up.
Race 1
It was a bit of a theme toward the end of last year to see cars getting penalized for changing lanes before the start/finish line, and that seems to continue into this year; in particular, Markus Pommer car got hit with a 10-second time penalty right from the start for breaking that rule.
About 10 minutes in, GSX had some drama, as Matt Dalton got into Frank DePew, spinning him and causing damage to both cars, effectively taking them both out of contention for a class win.
Further up front, GSX seemed to be the class with the tightest race for the lead, with Kiko Porto and Steven Clemons staying close for the first 20 minutes of the race. The draft thanks to Daytona's steep banking and long straights definitely helped keep that battle close. After Clemons got by, however, the gap quickly grew.
Despite being one of the few IMSA support series that has true multi-class racing, the lapped traffic didn't seem to make that big of a difference, as the LMP3 drivers in particular didn't seem to have any issues with getting past the slower cars.
In GTDX, the story was AJ Muss, who started at the rear thanks to a penalty. He worked his way back through the field, making a run back up to 2nd. Once that move was done, the battle for 3rd between Matias Perez Companc and Samantha Tan was definitely the most exciting of the day, with Perez Companc refusing to give up the position despite being slower throughout most of the circuit.
As we made it to the last third of the race, the battle between Valentino Catalano and Pommer began to heat up, although the point was more or less moot thanks to the penalty for Pommer. Catalano managed to win out and pull away from his teammate.
On the penultimate lap, the battle between Perez Companc and Tan ended up with Tan losing out to Dave Musial, who manged to make his way into the battle thanks to the two ahead of them fighting.
It was an almost perfect race for Catalano with him leading all but one lap to the win. The penalty for Pommer ended up not being as significant as it could have been thanks to a fully green race, and he ended up losing only one position at the end of the race.
Despite having a massive lead, Clemons ran out of fuel on the last lap, gifting the GSX win to Porto. GTDX was much less dramatic despite the great battles mid-pack, with Adam Adelson running away with a dominant win.
Multi-class racing is always fun, and there were plenty of great battles all over the track, so this definitely seemed like a good start to the Rolex weekend.
Race 2
To mix things up, rain descended on Daytona, delaying all of the day's events, but also meaning that the second SportsCar challenge race would be taking place in the wet. Due to the wet conditions, the race started under full-course yellow. To make things even more interesting, while the LMP3 cars are faster than the other classes, the GTDX and GSX cars are equipped with ABS, making them actually faster under braking in these conditions.
This time, Gregory Liefooghe, was penalized on the start for changing lanes before the start, where he was hit with a drive-through penalty. Porto was also given a penalty for the start, although that was assessed as a 10-second time penalty.
In GTDX, while Muss started on pole, he was passed by Adelson on the first lap. To add insult to injury, he spun coming into turn 1 on the next lap, putting him very far off the pace.
In LMP3, Catalano's dominance took a hit as he made a mistake and went off-track, losing the lead to Pommer. Pommer promptly gave the position back after making a mistake of his own, letting Catalano back by. Meanwhile, Mirco Schultis made a more terminal mistake, resulting in a high-speed crash that brought out the first caution for incident of the weekend.
Once the green flag came back out, Catalano had a pretty terrible restart, and he lost the lead, dropping back to 3rd. He was able to pretty easily drive his way back to the front.
As the race went on and the track dried out, things started to settle in, and the gaps began to grow, although there were still plenty of great battles all throughout the classes mid-pack. Pommer did begin to run down Catalano again, but again made a mistake, hitting the wet painted line and spinning. He made the same mistake in the same spot the next lap, this time costing him a position.
Clemons had another late-race issue, this time with something breaking on the car. He ended up stalled on the track, which could have affected the result, but race control apparently decided he was in a safe enough place to complete the last 5 minutes of the race.
As the checkered flag fell, the winners were the same as race 1. Catalano was able to hold on to win in LMP3, and Pommer was able to recover from his mistakes and drive back up to 2nd. In GTDX, Adelson once again dominated, winning by a large margin. Porto was able to overcome the 10-second penalty and win in GSX.
Having a wet race was a nice change of pace, and the drying of the track throughout the race added an extra complication for the drivers to deal with. Overall, I'd say this was a more than satisfactory race weekend over all, and a pretty good start to the Rolex weekend. I'm looking forward to next weekend, when we can see even more support races, as well as the 24h itself.
