Alonso Has A New Trophy In His Cabinet Following A Soaking Daytona 24
The so-called motorsport ‘Triple Crown’ may have eluded F1 retiree Fernando Alonso for now, but the Spaniard just added another big feat to his already mega CV: he’s now a Daytona 24 winner.
Jordan Taylor, Kamui Kobayashi and Renger van der Zande and Alonso steered the number 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac to victory, in a race that was anything but straightforward.
Alonso spent his stints reminding the motorsport world that he really is rather brilliant when given a car that’s actually competitive. During his first stint, the 37-year old leapt from ninth to first, built up a decent lead, saw it disappear under a caution period, and then built it back up again.
As if that wasn’t enough, the man was at points multiple seconds faster than anyone else when heavy rain hit the track in the early hours of Sunday. The deluge led to an hour-long caution period followed by a red flag with around seven hours to go, and although racing did resume 90 minutes later, the action was frequently hit with caution periods due to the extremely hazardous conditions.
A second red flag period of around an hour followed, and with the clock at 23 hours and 50 minutes, the number 10 Cadillac and its quartet of drivers were declared outright winners, ahead of Whelen Engineering Racing Cadillac’s Felipe Nasr, Pipo Derani and Eric Curran. Best of the LMP2 cars was the Oreca/Gibson car of DragonSpeed, with Roberto Gonzalez, Sebastian Saavedra, Ryan Cullen and motorsport’s favourite meme machine Pastor Maldonado.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Am I the only one absolutely devastated that the Mazda’s broke down within 10 mins of each other?
Biggest heartbreak of my life.
And I’ve been cheated on, so that says something
R.I.P.
R.I.P.
F
F
F
Wait, Kobayashi’s now in endurance? I completely forgot about what he became after he got out of F1
He switched back and forth between f1 and WEC a couple of times starting in 2013 but has been full time since 2016
It was a wild race…..one to be remembered!
ill remember not to pay IMSA to watch cars standing still
Lame! 24 hour endurance is about enduring… That even means even the elements, not even a category 5+ hurricane should have stopped the race….WEAK
You do know how many people crashed in that race, right? It was only a matter of time before someone got hurt.
Ford #67 was robbed. Robbed, I say!
No, they came in for emergency, they were out of fuel and had they went green, the 67 would fall way back anyway. The risi would have won
I for one, am very happy with this result