Daytona: Wayne Taylor winner, Chip Ganassi KO at the buzzer

How cruel! We witnessed an intense duel for victory at the 24 Hours of Daytona being the Acura of Wayne Taylor Racing (Ricky Taylor, Filipe Albuquerque, Alexander Red,  Helio Castroneves) and the No. 01 Cadillac of Chip Ganassi Racing (Kevin Magnussen, Renger van der Zande, Scott Dixon) in the last half hour of racing, door to door.

And suddenly, the Cadillac tire decided it had had enough. The puncture threw the car off the podium in the last ten minutes. In the end, the Acura won 5 seconds ahead of the No. 48 Action Express Cadillac driven by Jimmie Johnson, Kamui Kobayashi, simon pagenaud, Mike Rockenfeller and around ten seconds ahead of the #55 Mazda of Jonathan Bomarito, Harry Tincknell, Oliver Jarvis.

The latter is miraculous, since she was three laps behind for a long time. The numerous neutralizations allowed him to play for victory. A chance that the French did not have Duval, Bourdais and Vautier in the No. 5 Cadillac and the pole car, the No. 31 Action Express Cadillac. They have been delayed too long.

In GTLM, the hierarchy that we expected was respected. Despite good resistance from the #24 BMW and the Ferrari of Rsisi Competitzione, the two Corvettes offer themselves the double. The No. 3 of Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg won, just ahead of the sister car.

In LMP2, a Frenchman wins. The No. 18 Oreca from Era Motorsport, driven in particular by Paul-Loup Chatin, won ahead of the Tower Motorsport car driven by three Frenchmen, Gabriel Aubry, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Timothe Buret.

In GTD, the fight was obviously close until the end. Two cars have long provided the spectacle, the Mercedes n°57 HTP Winward Motorsport and the n°488 AF Corse Ferrari 3 GT21.

At the wheel are two of today's best GT drivers, Maro Engel and Daniel Serra. For several hours, the two men went wheel to wheel and exchanged heads. In the end, the battle ended in a knockout. The Mercedes 57 driven by Phillip Ellis and the Ferrari 21 AF Corse of Matteo Cressoni collided. The Mercedes somewhat missed its turn and hit the Ferrari which ended up in the wall. With no penalties imposed on it, the Mercedes of Russell Ward, Indy Dontje, Philip Ellis and Maro Engel managed the end of the race well to win.

In LMP3, victory went to the Riley Motorsport Ligier driven by Oliver Askew, Spencer Pigot, Scott Andrews and Gar Robinson.

The full report and analysis of the 24 Hours of Daytona by our special correspondent will be found in AUTOhebdo magazine n°2297 available from Monday in digital version.