By Don Coble, Special to Florida Sports Wire
DAYTONA BEACH – Dries Vanthoor proved his car can quickly complete a lap around the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway’s road course on Thursday afternoon.
The real challenge will come on Saturday and Sunday when he and co-drivers Phillipp Eng of Austria, Kevin Magnussen of Denmark and Raffaele Marciello of Italy can see if their BMW M Hybrid V8 GT Prototype can be fast and durable during the 63rd Rolex 24 at Daytona endurance race.
The pole-winning Belgian posted the quickest lap of 136.493 mph during a qualifying session that was abbreviated by a 9-minute, 10-second delay when the second BMW team car stalled on course, turning the 15-minute session into a 5-minute, 50-second sprint.
Added with cold temperatures, prototype teams didn’t have a lot of time to build up heat in their tires to gain grip on the 14-turn road course that utilizes portions of the superspeedway and a flat infield course.
“I don’t know the reason, the exact reason, what happened to them,” Vanthoor said. “Fortunately, you know, they couldn’t continue the session.”
An Acura ARX-06 driven by Great Britian’s Nick Yelloy will start second. He will be joined by Renger van der Zande of The Netherlands, Alex Palou of Spain and Kaku Ohta of Japan after he posted a fast lap of 136.071 mph.
The twice-around-the-clock race starts at 1:40 p.m. on Saturday. A field of 61 cars from four IMSA sports car classes – the faster prototypes, LMP2 prototypes and the slower GT Daytona and GTD Pros – will race against each other, creating a challenge for the experienced professionals and part-time enthusiasts.
Vanthoor admitted time trials speed was created during months of testing and in the shop in the offseason. Staying out of trouble and avoiding mechanical failure Saturday and Sunday will take a mix of luck and engineering prowess.
“We’ve been working hard, and it’s nice to see for everyone here, and working back at the factory,” he said. “I think everybody can be happy and proud of that. But again, it’s a little cherry on a big cake. This can go any way.”
There will be 12 prototypes in the race, as well as 12 LMP2s, 15 GTD Pros and 22 GT Daytonas.
The highest qualifying LMP2 was an ORECA LMP2 07 for Daniel Goldberg, Paul DeResta, James Allen and Rasmus Lindh at 129.879 mph, while the best GTD Pro was a Ford Mustang GT3 for Mike Rockenfeller, Sebastian Priaulx and NASCAR’s Austin Cindric at 121.452 mph, followed by the quickest GT Daytona was a Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) for Adam Adelson, Elliott Skeer, Tom Sargent and Ayhancan Guven at 120.187 mph.
The shortened GTP qualifying session caught all of the prototype teams off guard.
‟It was a mini-qualifying,” said Porsche 963 driver Gianmaria Bruni. “With such limited time, it’s not easy to set a competitive lap. However, everything came together well for us, and we maximized our potential. I’m satisfied with the result and optimistic for the race ahead. Our comparably small team is doing a fantastic job.”
“For sure, the red flag didn’t help anybody,” said Filipe Albuquerque, a two-time winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona. “I think for us, a little bit more in terms of knowing what the car was going to be like. We’re still learning about the car. (Position 7), it’s not the end of the world for a 24-hour race. It’s a long one. We keep going and learning the car. Obviously we would have liked to be a little bit further ahead, but we will see come Sunday.”
Albuquerque and his Wayne Taylor Racing teammates are adjusting to a manufacture change. After competing for Acura for five years, both WTR cars moved back to the Cadillac V-Series.R this year.
Albuquerque will start seventh.
The rest of the top six starters are the Porsche 963 driven by Felipe Nasr in third, the Cadillac V-Series.R for Jack Aiken in fourth, the Porsche for Bruni in fifth and the Acura ARX-06 for Tom Blomquvist in sixth.
There are 31 countries represented in the field of drivers.
