A total of 50 cars are set to take part in this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, with the entry list for the mandatory Roar Before the Rolex 24 having been released on Wednesday.
It marks the largest car count for the race since 2018 and comes just a year after an event-low 38 starters.

While teams have been listed, driver lineups are yet to be published by IMSA.

The DPi class sees a seven-car grid, with no major surprises in terms of driver lineups, which had mostly been previously determined and announced. NTT IndyCar Series star Scott Dixon and ex-Formula 1 driver Marcus Ericsson are expected to be the final two drivers in Chip Ganassi Racing’s Cadillac DPi-V.R lineup.
The CGR entry joins the returning Action Express Racing and No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillacs, with Mazda scaling down to a single DPi entry along with the debut of Meyer Shank Racing and Wayne Taylor Racing Acura ARX-05 cars. Six of the entries are set for the full season, with the No. 48 Action Express Cadillac currently only committed for Daytona-only.

LMP2 has doubled from five cars in 2020 to ten this year, thanks to an influx of European-based teams contesting the race for the first time.
It includes the likes of High Class Racing, Cetilar Racing and Racing Team Nederland along with recently announced full-season efforts from Tower Motorsport by Starworks, WIN Autosport and class stalwarts PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports.

The new-for-2021 LMP3 class, meanwhile, sees seven entries for Daytona, including at least five full-season teams.
Five of the entries are Ligier JS P320 Nissans, with Muehlner Motorsports and Forty7 Motorsports set to enter Duqueine D08 Nissans for the test and race.

Six entries are set to do battle for GT Le Mans class honors in Daytona, with Corvette Racing and BMW Team RLL back with two cars apiece, although the fate of the German manufacturer’s full-season program still not known.
WeatherTech Racing will make its GTLM debut with a Proton Competition Porsche 911 RSR-19 for the season and Risi Competizione completing the class for the Florida endurance classic.

GT Daytona sees the largest class in 20 entries, featuring nine manufacturers, including an Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo entered by NTE Sport.

The Roar Before the Rolex 24 will kick off proceedings at Daytona International Speedway on Jan. 22-24 and include the first ever qualifying race to set the grid for the twice-around-the-clock endurance classic the following week.

"I think there are positives as well as negatives," Tincknell said. "The positive is that all the focus is one car, and all the engineering capability of the team and all the analysis is devoted just to that car. It probably boosts that car slightly.

"But the negative is if something happens to that car, there isn’t another one to pick up the pieces. In the past there have been times where one Mazda has led, there’s been an issue and another one has been there to pick up the pieces.

"Now that won’t be the case, so we need to make sure that the #55 car is not only quick but reliable and won’t have issues. But now we have twice the engineering capacity, and already in testing I’ve seen how much of a difference that makes, having the extra support.

"It’s motor racing, things happen all the time, and you can’t dwell on might happen. The decision has been made to run one car and now we just have to maximise that one car as much as we can. I’ve no doubt we will."

The most iconic cars in Mazda’s private collection will have a new member joining its ranks as the chassis that scored the brand’s biggest North American race win is headed for its Californian headquarters.

The No. 55 Mazda RT24-P that carried Harry Tincknell, Jonathan Bomarito, and Ryan Hunter-Reay to victory in November’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, is set for a place beneath Mazda’s corporate base where it will hold a place of honor alongside the most important IMSA GTU, GTO, GTP, and Group C cars the company has preserved.

“There are some significant cars underneath Mazda’s design center,” Mazda Motorsports boss Nelson Cosgrove told RACER. “There’s a 787, but it’s not the right 787, there’s 767s, there’s old IMSA cars, and there’s a whole bunch of stuff. So this car will go in there and be within its family.”

Cosgrove instructed Mazda’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship team to leave the Sebring winner untouched after the brand scored its most significant prototype win since the Mazda 787B captured victory at the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans.

“It is, arguably, the second most important race we’ve won as a company,” he said. “It’ll be the 30-year anniversary of the Le Mans win in 2021, but, this has got to be the second most important win. It’s the 12 Hours of Sebring, man; it’s a big deal. And I’ve made the call, and we have some people that are in favor and some people that are not, but it’s been preserved as it came off the track.

“So in three or four years, when we all get sick of looking at this stuff, we can clean it, but we can never put it back to the way it is right now. So, it’s got confetti and dirt and tire marks and everything all over it – it is exactly as it came off the racetrack. We can always go clean it and rewrap it, but we can’t put it back to the way it is now. So, we’re going to leave it, let people enjoy it, and if we get tired of looking at it dirty, we’ll clean it.”

Mazda is among the most active manufacturers when it comes to entering its classic race cars in vintage events, which means the Multimatic-built chassis, and its AER-built four-cylinder turbo engine, will likely be seen and heard again in the coming years. And as Cosgrove shares, the retiring No. 55 RT24-P has two important areas of provenance to offer.

“So over the years in DPi, we’ve had a number of cars and spares made, and there was a replenishment plan for cars in the program for the older items that was planned in from the beginning,” he said. “So, there are tubs in our system that were purchased at the start the season we’d intended to rotate in, and our Sebring winner was one of them. So we ended up winning with engine 001 and chassis 001, and so it’s fitting, right, that this first car and engine are headed into the collection.”

Tristan Vautier put JDC-Miller Motorsports at top of the speed charts in Session 3 of the Roar Before the 24, the third different Cadillac DPi-V.R entry to take top honors so far.

Vautier was 0.289 seconds clear of second place Oliver Jarvis for Mazda Motorsports, the best showing of the Roar to date for the lone Mazda RT24-P in the field.

Post-qualifying technical inspection found the pole-winning No. 31 Cadillac to be underweight, and as a result, the lap set by Felipe Nasr has been voided and the car has been sent to the back of the class. The change promotes the No. 55 Mazda RT24-P to pole for Sunday’s qualifying race, with the 1m34.442s lap set by Oliver Jarvis. The No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura also failed technical inspection with a rear-wing height violation, and surrenders its fifth-place starting position while joining the No. 31 at the rear of the seven-car category.

Felipe Nasr alleges that the level of sandbagging seen at the Roar Before the Rolex 24, including in Sunday’s Motul Pole Award 100, had been “joke” in the DPi class and wished their rival manufacturers would have shown their hand.

Nasr and co-driver Pipo Derani claimed victory and the pole position for the 59th Rolex 24 at Daytona, taking their No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R to a 3.6-second win over the lone No. 55 Mazda RT-24 P in the 100-minute race.

Cadillacs finished first, third, sixth and seventh in the first-ever qualifying race, which the Brazilian feels did not provide the full picture of their competition in the DPi class.

“I know the other competitors — I’m not going to name them — they aren’t showing their hand,” said Nasr.

“We’re here working flat out to show what we’ve got and they don’t seem to be doing their thing. They can go much quicker than what they’re doing.

“I think all of the Cadillacs put in a great effort all week.

“You could see yesterday in qualifying. Every Cadillac was within a tenth of each other and the other manufacturers, they’re just not doing their thing.

“We’re here to go and race and I expect the maximum out of the car.

“For me it’s a joke that you see drivers have a great Sector 1, a great Sector 2 and then come Sector 3, which is just the Bus Stop, and then be a half-second off…

“C’mon, you’ve got to be kidding me. Just do the damn lap and show what you’ve got. It makes the whole life of the series easier; it makes everybody’s lives easier.”

With potential Balance of Performance adjustments at play ahead of Rolex 24 race week, Nasr has expressed concern that IMSA could slow the Cadillacs, which topped every session during the pre-season test weekend except for qualifying, which it lost due to a technical infringement.

“From my racing experience and since I’ve been with Action Express Racing, every time we hit the track, we show what we got,” Nasr said. “That makes everybody’s lives easier to analyze that.

“I’ve seen [sandbagging] all weekend and today again in the race.”

Nasr’s co-driver Derani echoed his countryman’s sentiments.

“The whole reason for the format — which I love — is to give an incentive to all of the teams to push considering there’s points available for this qualifying,” he said.

“That’s the whole reason for doing this qualifying race.

“Unfortunately the incentive wasn’t big enough for some of the other teams to come and show their hand, which is a shame.

“On our side, a race win is a race win, whether it’s 35 points or 350 points. That’s how we go racing. We always try our best to win every single race and that’s no different than what we did today.

“We are being crystal clear with what we have and trying to be very honest and expecting that honesty will pay off with a fair balance for a very important race.

“We wouldn’t like to see otherwise, or being penalized for being honest. That’s why we always go for the race win and for the maximum we have.”

Acura has announced its commitment to the LMDh top-level prototype category with a car that is due to make its race debut in 2023.

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship DPi manufacturer issued a brief statement on Tuesday confirming its involvement in the global hybrid prototype formula that has been jointly created by IMSA and the ACO.

Acura’s commitment opens the door for the Honda brand to compete for overall honors at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship, although its statement only mentions IMSA where it has raced in the top category since 2018

CORE autosport team owner Jon Bennett says his organization is watching the development of IMSA’s new top prototype class closely with an eye on a factory linkup when the LMDh platform come online in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in 2023.

Bennett, who is returning to the series in a driving capacity this season with an LMP3 effort after a one-year hiatus, told Sportscar365 his time racing against factories in IMSA’s top class in 2018 and 2019 season gave him an appreciation for the level of commitment required to fight for overall wins with and against major manufacturers.

“While I enjoyed [racing in the top category], it was really difficult to race factories as essentially a privateer entry,” he said.

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