The 2025 24 Hours of Daytona is underway, and I’m here to document the race and my experience as a sportscar fan over the course of the 24 hours. With updates every three hours, I hope to tell this legendary race’s story as the platinum era continues into 2025.

The race had once again settled into a rhythm, with the works Porsche cars battling for the lead, and later in the hour the no.60 Acura of Felix Rosenqvist became the next GTP car to take a hit. Overshooting his braking point into the barriers having just taken over the car from Renger Van De Zande and hit the wall, though the team inexplicably decided not to pit. This cost them roughly four seconds per lap on the competition, and that’s before you factor in time lost due to slower traffic.

After being some seven laps down, the no.57 Winward Racing Mercedes was now back in the lead thanks to some well timed full course yellows and the driving skills of Lucas Auer, running with a 25 second gap over the no.120 Wright Motorsport car of Elliot Skeer.

After returning from behind the wall, Conquest Racing’s no.34 Ferrari was running slowly again as the team’s troubles continued, now over twenty laps down on the lead car in the GTD class. During their pit entry, they got into an awkward situation with the no.18 Era Motorsport LMP2 which had been running well in its class, but lost valuable time in the skirmish.

The no.4 Crowdstrike LMP2 had an off in the infield section with Toby Sowery at the helm while trying to take the lead from Sebastian Bourdais’ Tower Motorsports no.8 LMP2.

The two Porsches continued their battle, with Kevin Estre taking over the lead in the no.6 car from Felipe Nasr in the no.7 through the tri-oval

The no.11 TDS racing LMP2 was awarded a drive through penalty for a pit lane speed violation, though it really didn’t matter. The car by that point was over sixty laps down on the LMP2 leader, and then the GTD leading Winward Racing car also received a similar penalty. It meant that the no.120 car of Elliot Skeer retook the GTD lead, as Winward slipped to ninth. 

There was one more penalty headed the way of Acura’s much delayed no.93 car. It somehow sped in the pitlane by almost 20 kilometres per hour, resulting in another drive through penalty.

At the moment its still Porsche who are out front displaying their superiority, with BMW’s no.24 car giving chase. Acura and Cadillac’s sole cars still in contention run fourth and fifth, with the no.60 ahead of the no.10. LMP2 sees a much more slender gap of just five seconds, with Spike now back in the lead after a 3 minute penalty it had to take earlier. Christian Rasmussen is in the lead car, just five seconds ahead of Job Van Uitert in the no.8 Tower Motorsports LMP2 car. The GT categories are also still really tense. GTD Pro still sees Rexy lead, Klaus Bachler at the helm with a fifteen second advantage to the works Corvette of Antonio Garcia. Ford still linger in third with Dennis Olsen in the no.65 car. GTD now sees the no.13 AWA Corvette in the lead with Matthew Bell ahead of Ralf Aron’s no.80 Lone Star Mercedes.

Still all to play for with six hours to go.

thumbnail credit – Osajus Photography from Asheville, NC, United States, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons