Porsche can extend its lead as the manufacturer with the most wins in the Rolex 24 at Daytona in Florida if it comes in first again this year.
The German automaker already holds the record for the most victories by a manufacturer in the endurance race. But if it wins this weekend’s opening event of the 2025 I.M.S.A. WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, run by the International Motor Sports Association, it will extend that total to 20.
It took No. 19 last year, giving it the same amount of victories as its top three competitors combined. Porsche’s first win in the race was in 1968.
The prospect of grabbing No. 20 has instilled extra motivation in the Team Penske squad that operates Porsche’s 963 LMDh cars in the I.M.S.A. Grand Touring Prototype class.
“It’s really important to put these milestones and lines in the sand,” Jonathan Diuguid, the Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director, said in an interview.
“When you can focus on things like 20 wins at a race like Daytona, it’s probably never going to be caught — in my lifetime anyway. And so, to be part of extending those records and extending those goal posts for our competitors, it’s really important, really rewarding.”
Porsche won its 19th Daytona last year, battling Cadillac and its Action Express team. After an entire day of racing, Felipe Nasr of Porsche brought his car to the checkered flag, coming in first by just 2.1 seconds.
“It was amazing,” Nasr, a former Formula 1 driver from Brazil, said in a recent interview. “Everything that I knew as a driver, I had to put it to the test.”
Porsche Penske Motorsport went on to win the 2024 I.M.S.A manufacturer’s title, while Nasr and Dane Cameron of the United States, who was then his teammate, clinched the drivers’ championship. Overall, Porsche won three more races in 2024, with Nasr and Cameron taking one more victory after Daytona. The team’s second car — driven by Mathieu Jaminet of France and Nick Tandy of England — scored the other two, as they finished second in the drivers’ championship.
These results represented a major improvement from the 2023 I.M.S.A series for Porsche Penske Motorsport. That was the first season Porsche and Penske had joined forces to run the 963 car in the championship, as well as in the Hypercar division of the World Endurance Championship, a separate program that races around the globe using cars of the same type as the Grand Touring Prototype class in its top category.
That season marked a transition for Porsche, as it started to compete in the top categories of sports car racing again, following a change in car design rules that made the racing programs less expensive.
Porsche won three I.M.S.A races in that first season back, but none of its drivers challenged for the 2023 championship, and it was beaten by Cadillac in the manufacturers’ standings. Porsche struggled to make its cars fast consistently, and they were also unreliable mechanically.
“The 2023 season didn’t go as any of us wanted,” Diuguid said. “So, a lot of hard work was put in over the off-season.”
The team has introduced a new front-suspension design to try and make its car faster in tighter, slower turns. It has also been working to better understand how the car’s tires can be run faster when temperatures rise through a 24-hour race, such as Daytona.
At last year’s race, Porsche held an edge in the cool night conditions, but Cadillac was quicker when the sun rose.
“Even though we won last year, we haven’t taken our foot off the accelerator of trying to get better,” Diuguid said. “We could have sat back and said, ‘Hey, the car won all these races and championships, why are we changing anything?’
“And the reason is because we know we can improve. It’s why we keep coming back to the racetrack.”
For the new I.M.S.A. season, Porsche Penske Motorsport has also reduced its number of drivers after a performance review. Tandy has become Nasr’s full-time I.M.S.A teammate, and Cameron was dropped from the program.
In the 2024 Daytona race, both Porsche cars were crewed by four drivers each. This time, there will be three in each.
For Daytona and the other longer events at Sebring, Fla., and Road Atlanta, Nasr and Tandy will be joined by Laurens Vanthoor, who races Porsches in the F.I.A. World Endurance Championship. I.M.S.A rules allow for lineups to expand beyond the full-time crews for the longer races for safety reasons.
“It’s really about the physical side of it,” Diuguid explained. “And just making sure that they’re fresh when they’re in the car.”
Porsche Penske Motorsport opted to make all these changes as a result of the extremely close competition last year, when teams from four different manufacturers won races. Cadillac won the season finale at Road Atlanta, which is called Petit Le Mans in homage to the endurance race in France. BMW and its Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team came on strong as the year progressed, and it won the penultimate race of the season on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course.
“I’m not discounting anybody,” Diuguid said. “Because the quality of the teams and the quality of drivers in the I.M.S.A. field is second to none and probably the highest that I’ve seen in the past 15 years.”
Cadillac is expected to be a major threat to Porsche.
Last year, Cadillac’s Action Express team lost narrowly at Daytona, a result that largely came down to a late-race caution period, when Nasr refueled faster than Cadillac and took the lead he would not lose.
“We feel like we have something to prove after last year,” Gary Nelson, the Action Express team manager, said in a recent interview.
“Porsche is the defending champion and winner of the race. So, you’ve got to say that’s the target — to beat them. But we have worked awful hard in this off-season to improve every detail of our program.”
But Nasr is certain Porsche will win.
“I believe with this momentum we’ve built up as a team and how we have evolved as a whole, both our cars have a strong chance to be fighting for victory,” he said.
“It’s a race that everybody’s trying to give their 100 percent. And I feel ready. We’ve done it in 2024, and it will be incredible to do it again, back-to-back.”
