PIT + PADDOCK

Action Express car will start at the front

Cadillac claims 1-2 on Daytona grid as records take a tumble in the cool

DAYTONA 24 HOURS Cadillac has claimed first blood in the battle for this weekend’s Daytona 24 Hours. The US marque locked out the front row with its two V-Series.R LMDhs for the IMSA SportsCar Championship curtain-raiser as Action Express driver Pipo Derani smashed the unofficial track record at the Daytona International Speedway to grab the pole.

The Brazilian got down to a 1m32.656s lap during the 15-minute GTP class qualifying session at the end of last weekend’s three-day Roar pre-event test. That gave him a margin of just 0.071s over Sebastien Bourdais in the Ganassi-run sister car.

Best of the rest behind the Caddys was Porsche driver Felipe Nasr, who ended up 0.2s down on Derani’s pole mark in the fastest of the Penske team’s two 963 LMDhs. The nine cars from four manufacturers that took part in GTP qualifying were covered by just 0.9s at its conclusion.

All nine were faster than the old qualifying mark set by Oliver Jarvis when he took pole with a 1m33.685s for the Rolex-sponsored 24 Hours in 2019 aboard his Mazda RT24-P Daytona Prototype international. That broke the long-standing record set by PJ Jones driving a Toyota-engined Eagle MkIII in 1993, admittedly on a subtly different variant of the 3.56-mile DIS ‘roval’.

Derani’s pole is nearly a second and a half quicker than at last year’s inaugural race for the LMDh-based GTP class, when Tom Blomqvist set a 1m34.031s at the wheel of the Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 that controversially went on to win.

Twelve months’ worth of development of the new breed of hybrid prototype racer and favourable conditions played a part in the fast times. “Obviously, the Cadillac was flying out there today,” said Derani. “It was just a privilege and a pleasure to drive such a car – really well balanced.”

He credited ambient temperatures barely into double figures and a tailwind on the back straight for at least part of the improvement from last year. “We weren’t really talking about what was possible, we were just trying to maximise the tools that we had,” he explained. “I was quite surprised [by the time], but I think the conditions were perfect for that – cold, the tyres were working well, and obviously for qualifying you’re running low fuel.”

But comparing the qualifying times this year with last isn’t straightforward, because the Balance of Performance designed to create a level playing field in GTP has been changed since 2023. IMSA started out with what might be termed a base BoP this time

WTRAndretti Acura gets taken to limit

GALSTAD

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY

DAYTONA GTP GRID

POS DRIVER (TEAM)

1 Pipo Derani (Cadillac)

TIME

1m32.656s

2 Sebastien Bourdais (Cadillac) 1m32.727s 3 Felipe Nasr (Porsche) 1m32.876s 4 Connor De Phillippi (BMW) 1m33.022s 5 Louis Deletraz (Acura) 1m33.100s 6 Filipe Albuquerque (Acura) 1m33.347s 7 Nick Tandy (Porsche) 1m33.381s 8 Jesse Krohn (BMW) 1m33.499s 9 Tijmen van der Helm (Porsche) 1m33.506s 10 (Porsche) no time

4 AUTOSPORT.COM 25 JANUARY 2024