The Wayne Taylor Racing Acura led the Daytona 24 Hours with six hours to go, with Alexander Rossi leading Kevin Magnussen’s Cadillac Racing Chip Ganassi after 18 hours.
There was immediate drama as the break of day broke, as Kamui Kobayashi spun the Cadillac # 48 Action Express at Turn 1 while attacking Renger van der Zande for the lead shortly after the interval. a resume that followed the eighth full-course warning of the race.
After a comfortable spell out for the Ganassi car, the yellow ninth came with just under eight hours to go with another boost for the PR1 / Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca.
Ganassi took the opportunity to change the nose on the # 01 Cadillac DPi-VR, dropping van der Zande to fifth and letting Helio Castroneves ’WTR Acura ARX-05 into the steering wheel.
At the start, van der Zande was moving, picking up the Cadillacs of Jimmie johnson and Pipo Derani to move into third place, and some lapsan after that the Dutchman found a path with Meyer Shank Racing Acura of Dane Cameron to take second place.
With just over seven hours on the clock, van der Zande passed Castroneves to steer, but during the next pitstop step at the start of Hour 18 the Ganassi car lost ground as van der Zande gave Kevin Magnussen who was a Formula 1 driver.
That brought the campaign back to WTR, and when Castroneves gave Rossi halfway through the hour, the IndyCar ace started to bounce comfortably in front of him, leading Magnussen around three seconds as reached the 18-hour mark.
Felipe Nasr was in third-best Cadillacs AXR, eight seconds down, and Olivier Pla’s Acura MSR was fourth in front of Simon Pagenaud in Cadillac’s second AXR.
The ninth re-enactment of the fight put the fight in the LMP2 class, with the Motorsport Tower with Starworks Oreca and Era Motorsport Oreca placed on the same lap.
Gabriel Aubry was asked in the Tower car to hold on to Era, Kyle Tilley, and the Frenchman was able to build up enough of an advantage to give his compatriot Matthieu Vaxiviere the lead in tact.
With six hours of the race remaining, Vaxiviere was just two seconds ahead of Tilley, while the DragonSpeed Oreca was in third place but a breast down in the hands of Christopher Mies.
Riley Motorsports continued the smooth run towards victory in the LMP3 division with a slightly smaller margin of four laps over Sean Creech Motorsports squad.
After a brief lead for BMW, Corvette regained control in the battle of GT Le Mans and held a hard one-two with six hours of the race to go.
Before the ninth warning, the top three cars stood together, and it was at that point that the BMW led by Connor de Phillippi surrendered the victory to the Corvettes.
Antonio Garcia’s # 3 Corvette took the lead shortly, but shortly afterwards Tommy Milner’s C8.R sister got back in front, and after the next round of stops – when Nick Tandy took control of the # 4 and Jordan Taylor the # 3 – it was the silver Corvette that secured the win.
Tandy led with about five seconds over Taylor with six hours to run, and John Edwards had another seven seconds back in the best of the BMWs.
Ferrari 488 GTE at Risi Competizione ran fourth in the hands of Davide Rigon ahead of DTM ace in the second of BMW M8 GTEs run by Team RLL.
In GT Daytona, a cheerful battle between Ferrari Daniel Serra and Mercedes Maro Engel was finally resolved for the AF Corse Ferrari at the 18-hour mark.
Andrea Caldarelli was on the Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 up to third, 30 seconds down, followed by Trent Hindman in the Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R and Laurens Vanthoor in the Porsche Motorsports Pfaff.
Mercedes Racing SunEnergy1 had slipped to sixth place, led by Mikael Grenier.