"They are just playing with us!" Renger van der Zande said as early as Saturday evening during a media round in the media center of the Daytona International Speedway. They were words of pain.
Urs Kuratle, Porsche's LMDh chief, countered that after the race when asked by Motorsport.com: "I’m convinced that it looked more dominant than it actually was."
Porsche seemed untouchable through almost the entire race. Although the factory-entered 963s from Porsche Penske Motorsport were regularly brought back in line by the cautions, they kept moving back to the front swiftly.
Porsche therefore had a pace advantage over long stretches of the race. This is also shown by the data when we look at the 60 per cent fastest laps of all cars:
Penske-Porsche #7 – 1m38.104s Penske-Porsche #6 - 1:38.265 AXR-Cadillac #31 - 1:38.283 WRT-BMW #24 - 1:38.379 MSR-Acura #93 - 1:38.386 WRT-BMW #25 - 1:38.511 WTR-Cadillac #10 - 1:38.545 MSR-Acura #60 - 1:38.585 WTR-Cadillac #40 - 1:38.641 JDC-Miller-Porsche #85 - 1:38.706 Thor-Aston-Martin #23 – 1:39.432
If we only look at the ten percent best laps, the following picture emerges:
Penske-Porsche #6 – 1m37.272s Penske-Porsche #7 - 1:37.275 AXR-Cadillac #31 - 1:37.320 MSR-Acura #93 - 1:37.384 WRT-BMW #24 - 1:37.428 WTR-Cadillac #10 - 1:37.450 WRT-BMW #25 - 1:37.507 MSR-Acura #60 - 1:37.622 WTR-Cadillac #40 - 1:37.628 JDC-Miller-Porsche #85 - 1:37.728 Thor-Aston-Martin #23 - 1:38.322Porsche is clearly ahead in both categories. Interestingly, the #6 Penske Porsche looks better in the top 10 percent lap times than in the top 60.
This suggests that the possible damage caused by the LMP2 contact in the early stages of the race had a bigger effect in traffic than in peak performance.
BMW gets it done in the last moment
The positive surprise of the race were the two BMW M Hybrid V8. BMW was the third-strongest force behind the factory Porsche team and the #31 Cadillac, and it came at the expense of Acura.
The factory #93 Acura ARX-06 performs better in the top 10 per cent than in the 60 per cent average. This confirms Acura's pre-race fears regarding tyre wear.
BMW, on the other hand, was initially a lost cause both during the pre-test and the first two practice sessions on the race weekend. Drivers complained about the car’s balance. Only last-minute set-up changes brought the BMWs on the right path.
WRT team principal Vincent Vosse was overjoyed after the race: "What an achievement by the team. It's incredible what everyone at BMW M Motorsport and Team WRT has achieved. I can't thank each and every one of them enough."
What makes these words remarkable is that they come from the team principal of the epitome of GT3 success worldwide, proving under how much pressure WRT was operating right away.
The drivers were also completely surprised by the performance in the race. "This is one of the most surprising podiums of my career," Kelvin van der Linde said.
Dries Vanthoor, who drew attention to himself at the beginning of the season last year with a series of poles, added that it was "a very unexpected podium". Robin Frijns and Rene Rast expressed similar views.
Of course, it would be easy to accuse BMW of sandbagging in the run-up to the race. But it would have made little sense if a new team had deliberately held back performance, since it wants to learn.
It is actually more likely that WRT initially got lost with the 2026 update, but made the right adjustments at the very last moment.
For this race, a lot of WEC personnel was on site to help the US branch of WRT in Charlotte get going.
It paid off ultimately, even if six "Roar" sessions and three free practices were necessary to find the right way. Solving this problem and getting a podium is a solid foundation for the next races for WRT USA.
On the other hand, the numbers must feel heavy on Wayne Taylor Racing. Both Cadillac V-Series.Rs were significantly slower than the identical car from Action Express Racing.
Equally disappointing was the performance of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which seems not to like high-speed tracks.
Final sprint: Action Express wakes up
Naturally, in the Rolex 24, the final sprint after the final restart is where the money gets earned. This time it lasted two hours and 15 minutes.
If we only consider this sprint to the flag and take the 60 percent fastest laps again, the following result emerges:
AXR-Cadillac #31 – 1m37.884s Penske-Porsche #7 - 1:37.902 WRT-BMW #24 - 1:38.007 WRT-BMW #25 - 1:38.145 Penske-Porsche #6 - 1:38.181 MSR-Acura #93 - 1:38.204 MSR-Acura #60 - 1:38.244 WTR-Cadillac #40 - 1:38.336 WTR-Cadillac #10 - 1:38.383 JDC-Miller-Porsche #85 - 1:38.550The Aston Martin is missing from this chart because it was already several laps down and went behind the wall for another long repair in the final hour.
For the first time, Porsche is not on top of a pace statistic. The #31 Cadillac was the faster car by a small margin, but Porsche won the race thanks to its track position.
Thus, it can be stated that Connor Zilisch's exiting the pits under red could well have cost the #31 Cadillac the victory. It lost the lead lap, which it only got back at the eighth of nine cautions with four hours to go.
So the apparent dominance of Porsche might have been down to the #31 being out of position for most of the race. The Cadillac was stripped of its pole position and Jack Aitken also got a drive-through penalty for a jump start early on.
That’s why the Caddy was not even on the radar at all when the two Porsche 963s delivered their remarkable show in the first stint, which caused such great discussion.
The penalty for Zilisch's red-light offense moved the Cadillac off the radar for a second time after the long caution.
That made the Porsches look way more dominant than they actually were. The #31 was the only car that could take the fight to the Porsches on its own. And it really did in the end.
To establish which car performed best in the final sprint compared to the rest of the race, we take the top 60 percent lap times from the final two hours and 15 minutes and run them against the top 60 percent lap times in the full race:
AXR-Cadillac #31 - 0.399s faster in the last stint WRT-BMW #24 - 0.372 WRT-BMW #25 - 0.366 MSR-Acura #60 - 0.341 WTR-Cadillac #40 - 0.305 Penske-Porsche #7 - 0.202 MSR-Acura #93 - 0.182 WTR-Cadillac #10 - 0.162 JDC-Miller-Porsche #85 - 0.156 Penske-Porsche #6 - 0.084It is clearly shown that Porsche gained significantly less time in the final sprint than the competition.
The victorious #7 Porsche managed a two-tenth gain per lap to keep an Acura and a WTR Cadillac just behind it. However, the direct opposition found way more lap time.
Only two logical explanations remain: Either Porsche was the only manufacturer to go flat-out right from the start. Or the Porsche 963 lacked pace in the exceptionally warm conditions at the end of the race compared to its direct opponents.
The decline in performance of the #6 Penske Porsche is striking. It improved the least of all cars in the last 135 minutes by a considerable margin.
At the post-race press conference, Porsche officials denied that the aforementioned possible damage was to blame.
Kevin Estre, however, refers to the damage again in the official press release sent out a few hours later:
"Unfortunately, we nudged another car at the start. The team couldn’t fully fix the damage, so we’ll never know just how strong our 963 could have been without that incident."
And Acura? The ARX-06 looked strong during the night, but the warmer it got, the further it fell back. The factory #93 car gained less time in the final sprint than the #7 Porsche; the #60 was significantly faster, but came from a much lower baseline (see statistics at the beginning).
Thus, it can be concluded that both sides were somehow correct. Porsche was indeed playing with Acura. But the victory was by far not as dominant as it might have looked after the first 120 minutes.
Read Also:
Porsche after Rolex 24 win: “It looked more dominant than it actually was”
Demoralized Renger van der Zande says "Porsche is playing with us" in Rolex 24
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