Daytona 24h, Hour 18: Porsche continues to dominate as…

Porsche led the Daytona 24 Hours with its two factory Penske prototypes with six hours of the 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship curtain-raiser remaining.

The #7 Porsche 963 LMDh with Nick Tandy at the wheel held a narrow advantage of 5.6s over the sister #6 car driven by Matt Campbell as the race hit the three-quarter mark.

Penske Porsche Motorsport’s two entries held a clear advantage at the front of the GTP field after nearly three hours of green flag running following the 10th safety car of the race.

Philipp Eng in the #24 Rahal BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh trailed the second Porsche by half a minute, with Scott Dixon aboard the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 a similar time back in fourth.

The #6 Porsche led into the pitstop cycle in the middle of 18th hour, Kevin Estre holding an advantage of just under five seconds over Felipe Nasr in #7 after overtaking the Brazilian late in hour 17.

Porsche’s #7 entry, now with Tandy driving, briefly got ahead during the pitstops, before Campbell who’d taken over driving duties one lap earlier took #6 back into the lead.

Tandy then got a better run down the front straight with 20 minutes of the hour remaining to put #7 back into the lead.

#6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Mathieu Jaminet, Matt Campbell, Kevin Estre (Photo by: Porsche)

The pole-winning BMW was best of the rest after the remaining Shank Acura in contention lost time when Felix Rosenqvist damaged the nose of the car after nudging the barriers at Turn 6 on an out-lap.

BMW’s bid for a first outright Daytona victory since 1976 appeared to hang on the #24 car.

The #25 entry was down in seventh place and two laps off the lead after a problem with the left rear corner when the car underwent a change of rear brakes.

Just one of the three Cadillac V-Series.R LMDhs remained in the hunt, Brendon Hartley holding fifth in the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing entry nearly a lap down on the leader.

The sister #40 WTR entry, which Kamui Kobayashi had twice taken the lead in the early night hours with, went out after seven and a half hours when Louis Deletraz crashed out of Turn 1 when the race restarted.

Action Express Racing’s Caddy lost more than 20 laps to repairs after Frederik Vesti hit the wall at the final corner after suffering a suspension failure.

The top six was rounded out by customer JDC-Miller MotorSports privateer Porsche, but the Proton Competition customer 963 went out of the race with suspension problems with Nico Pino driving.

#99 AO Racing, ORECA LMP2 07: PJ Hyett, Dane Cameron, Jonny Edgar, Christian Rasmussen (Photo by: IMSA)

AO Racing was back at the front in LMP2 with its ORECA-Gibson 07, Christian Rasmussen enjoying a class lead of just over five seconds over the #8 Tower Motorsport entry with Job van Uitert driving.

Madison Snow took the lead in GT Daytona Pro for BMW just before 18 hours and the award of the next tranche of IMSA Endurance Cup points.

He moved the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO past AO’s Porsche 911 GT3-R driven by Klaus Bachler on the infield to take the class lead.

Dennis Olsen held third in the #65 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 with Antonio Garcia fourth in the best of the Corvette Racing entries.

Chevrolet leads the regular GTD class with AWA ‘Vette with Matt Bell driving.