The two factory Porsches approach Turn 1 which leaves the oval. The immensity of the grandstands can be seen behind. The factory cars ran well, given that they are brand new cars. Driver line-ups are slightly changed from last year: the #911 will have Nick Tandy, Fred Makowiecki and new comer Matt Campbell; while the #912 will have Laurens Vanthoor, Earl Bamber and Mathieu Jaminet
The Roar at Daytona was completed on Sunday 6 January. This has become a standard three-day test put on by IMSA for the Daytona 24 hours, always in the first week of January. It is mandatory for all entrants (of the 24 hour) to attend as IMSA uses it to monitor performance for potential BOP changes. The teams get to test new tyres, new cars and other new components prior to the busy upcoming race week. This year there was a new Michelin tyre, and several new cars that were making their debut, notably the new Porsche RSR GTLM, and the Corvette C8R. The field comprised 40 cars, which, while a little low compared to prior years, was a premium group of cars. A few more pits have been lost at Daytona, as a safety barrier was installed for the Daytona 500 which took away three of the existing pits. So, with this current configuration only about 47 full size pits are available.
The quickest GTD Porsche was the Black Swan Racing entry driven by Bleekemolen, Estep, Muller and Pappas. However, all the GTD (GT3) cars were within just over 1 second of time, so not a lot of difference. Also, since the Bronze drivers qualify, it is not really a show of outright speed of the car
There was a qualifying session for all classes, which is used to select pits and garage spaces (note: not for race start positions). Some teams seem to care about this, others not. There seemed to be some complaints in the early days (which were quite warm – 80ºF) about the BOP. But, when push came to shove, the qualifying sessions were amazingly close in all classes.
