Teams from Acura, BMW, Cadillac and Porsche will get five practice sessions through Friday and Saturday in the ‘Roar Before the Rolex 24’, which will likely all be used to simulate race runs.
Although the four GTP marques have previously tested together at Daytona in December, there was no official timing to reflect their relative pace.
In early December, IMSA announced that this year's Rolex 24 qualifying – to be held on Sunday – would revert to the traditional style after incorporating a 100-minute race that set the grid in 2021 and ’22.
When asked by Motorsport.com if the true pace of its cars will be displayed on low fuel and new tires in Sunday's qualifying session, Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Jonathan Diuguid replied: “We all know racing drivers: even if we told ’em to go out there and protect the car and not take risks because of the parts situation in qualifying, they don’t listen very well from time to time!
“I think the qualifying session is going to be a representative one. The pole for a 24-hour race isn’t critical but it is important, especially with the Daytona 24 Hours that puts our brand and manufacturer into the spotlight in the lead up to the race.
“I think everybody does want that, and there are points on the line as well. IMSA has done a good job of putting value into qualifying, that might not have been there before.
“I think you’ll get a relative understanding of the pace of the cars, but the underlying current is that reliability and time on the track is going to win this race, not really the pace. So I think that will be most of the focus from teams going into this Daytona 24 Hours.”
IMSA’s manufacturers and their teams have been racking up the miles in testing to verify the reliability of their new cars, which feature a common electrical hybrid system that has been troublesome at times, coupled with open software systems that have put fresh demands on teams to overcome.
But Chip Ganassi Racing’s Mike O’Gara pointed out that the cars have been driven hard from the outset, to the point that fans will see a true battle for pole position on Sunday – with 35 points going to the pole winner, and the top 10 all rewarded.
“We’ve been running hard everywhere we go,” he said. “You have to, for both durability and to get the handling dialed in and the tire life. We’re never just putting around. But qualifying is the first time you’ll see ten-tenths out of everyone.”
Wayne Taylor Racing’s Travis Hogue echoed those sentiments, as Acura bids for a third straight Rolex 24 victory.
“We don’t have a choice; when we get into the Roar we have to run these cars in anger, to find out what they’re going to do under all the loads they’re going to be raced under,” he said.
“By the time we get to qualifying, yes, the drivers will do what they do in spite of anything we tell them. But, from a team standpoint, we have to know where we’re at and where our pace is going to be.”
Qualifying begins on Sunday at 13:25 ET, bringing the curtain down on three days of running before the Rolex 24 at Daytona on January 28-29.
