[Semi OT] American open wheel racing at the 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona
2025.01.18 18:19 Yoshiman400 [Semi OT] American open wheel racing at the 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona
While there are still some small gaps in the entry list for driver spots, this is usually a fairly safe time to post something like this. As always, mods have permission to sticky, and readers beware of the two sticky limit so you don't miss out!
Before IndyCar kicks off their Fox era, many of their past and present stars continue their great tradition of shaking off the winter rust with a Florida swing that kicks off at the Rolex 24 at Daytona before preseason testing at Sebring and the start of their own season in St. Petersburg. In this first stop, sports car racing enters the second quarter of the 21st century stronger than ever. The brotherhood between IMSA and WEC could not be tighter as teams and manufacturers continue to aspire in conquering the trials of speed and endurance in new cars and ever-friendly trips across the globe. Four classes of cars, two laps around the clock, and hundreds more around the high banks add up to endless possibilities towards how this year’s running will play out.
Don’t be surprised if you see some familiar names in curious locations this year. The balance of sports car racing is always very fluid, with teams and drivers moving in, out, and around on a regular basis, and one class’ loss is sometimes another’s gain. But the rule here remains the same–all the drivers on this list have made at least one start in an IndyCar, CART, or ChampCar World Series race in their own driving history.
Some of the notable IndyCar-related highlights of IMSA’s 2024 season include a trio of open wheel winners at Daytona: Josef Newgarden among the overall winners with Penske (also note Penske’s dominance in the WEC Hypercar class), and Ryan Dalziel and 2024 Indy rookie Christian Rasmussen in the Era Motorsport LMP2 machine. Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon also contributed to a Petit Le Mans win for Cadillac in their last GTP race with Ganassi alignment. Joining Dalziel among the winners at Sebring was Colton Herta in the GTP class, and Kyle Kirkwood and Jack Hawksworth for Lexus in GTD Pro. In the GTD pro-am ranks, Jan Heylen and Devlin DeFrancesco also got in on the late season fun with podiums at the end of the season; Heylen winning at Indianapolis and Devlin with a P2 at Road Atlanta.
The usual disclaimers!
As always, the maximum entry list for teams is dictated by the cars entered for the Roar Before the 24 test sessions in January. I do my best to continually read up on last minute changes which may necessitate this post to be edited, and to handle those edits as necessary. When all else is in doubt, consult any comments at the bottom of this post.
Also as usual, drivers are listed under the teams they will be running for, which are divided by class and then sorted by the smallest number claimed within a team. (Basically, it’s the same order that you'd see on Wikipedia with an IndyCar-based filter.) The Rolex 24 will be kicking off at 1:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, Saturday January 25 on NBC, IMSA TV and YouTube, or whatever your local television or streaming service may be.
Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class Proton Competition
5 - Neel Jani / Tristan Vautier
No Ganassi cars in 2025 means no cars with a leading 0 fronting the list, so we jump straight to the Proton Porsche team and the former ChampCar driver in Jani alongside the IndyCar journeyman of Vautier. After a slow debut at the end of the 2023 WEC season, Proton made inroads as a steady midfield team in the IMSA GTP ranks, with fifth place finishes at Daytona, Long Beach, Road America, and Indianapolis. Vautier’s last season in IMSA was 2022, also in a #5 Mustang Sampling prototype, but that was an Action Express-affiliated Cadillac rather than the Proton Porsche. That season included third place at Daytona and second at Sebring. Their 2024 success in WEC was more limited, only managing top tens in two of the first three rounds, also including a fifth place at Spa. Nonetheless, the Porsches had speed throughout the season in IMSA, so there is plenty of opportunity for the team to set a new standard this year. Jani has seen victory in Florida before, with a 2022 win at Sebring.
BMW M Team RLL
24 - Kevin Magnussen
Stepping away from the Haas F1 team, the one-time Road America IndyCar entrant of Kevin Magnussen gets back behind the wheel of an IMSA prototype with a team who’s had a long open wheel history of their own. Rahal Letterman Lanigan returns to the list with plenty of past success at Daytona including a then-GTLM victory in 2019, Colton Herta among the winning drivers. The big Bimmers have seen mixed results since the team came to the premier class in 2023, but few things could bring a bigger smile to a Bobby Rahal-owned team like a 1-2 across the yard of bricks last year. KMag spent his one year break between his Haas tenures running for Cadillac in IMSA, scoring a win at Detroit among five total podiums for the 2021 campaign.
Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian
60 - Tom Blomqvist / Colin Braun / Scott Dixon / Felix Rosenqvist
93 - Alex Palou
Despite Ganassi having run with Cadillac in IMSA in recent years, a little bit of convenient deal making in Indianapolis has allowed Chip’s stars to find themselves together in a Honda-based GTP team. Mike Shank and friends have returned to IMSA after a one-year sabbatical largely brought on by technical infractions which soured their reputation in the paddock. If this team wants to come back with a vengeance and prove they can win this race the right way–as they did in 2022–they’ve assembled a fine cast of drivers to give it their all. Blomqvist’s sports car career broke out in large part from that 2022 victory, plus a later win at Petit Le Mans alongside a class championship before teaming up with Braun (two IndyCar starts in 2024) full time in 2023. Despite the specter of their Daytona infraction clouding that second consecutive win, they did claim a sprint win in Mosport and doubled down in Atlanta under fairer circumstances en route to third in points. Blomqvist finished second at Daytona with the Whelen Cadillac team in 2024 and Braun likewise had a second place with CrowdStrike in the LMP2 class.
Dixon’s success in sports cars, of course, nearly rivals his success in Indy cars, having claimed numerous endurance victories with Chip Ganassi and Wayne Taylor’s teams over the years, including Petit Le Mans in 2024. 2025 marks Rosenqvist’s first appearance in IMSA’s top class since the 2018 Rolex, while Palou hopes his third appearance in this race (coincidence or not, all of them immediately following his three IndyCar titles) is the charm after premature issues in his first two runs.
Automobili Lamborghini Squadra Corsa
63 - Romain Grosjean
2024 was a year of significant transition for Lamborghini in the top flight of sports car racing, as the Italian marque set off for their hypercar campaign in IMSA and WEC. Accordingly, 2025 marks Grosjean’s first appearance in the top class after running in the GT ranks with Iron Lynx the previous two years. While it was not the most glorious of debuts for the team, with their best combined gross finish between the two series being a seventh on their IMSA debut at Sebring, the bulls have always been known for their speed at Daytona, and by having some of the fastest laps at Road Atlanta last year, perhaps they will charge to the front this year…
Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class CrowdStrike Racing by APR
04 - Colton Herta / Toby Sowery
Just how many teams can Colton run and win this race for? At the very least, you can add one to the former this year as he returns to the LMP2 class for his second start there. CrowdStrike is coming off of two straight runner up finishes at the Rolex alongside wins at Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans in 2023, with Sowery among their 2024 crew (alongside three IndyCar starts), although the team sat out the rest of last year’s IMSA season after four races and an early exit at Le Mans. Herta’s prior LMP2 Daytona victory came with DragonSpeed in 2022, in addition to a GT victory with RLL and an overall win at Sebring in 2024 with Wayne Taylor and Andretti Autosport. Sowery has also claimed an Asian Le Mans Series LMP2 win at Abu Dhabi with Algarve Pro Racing in the 2023-2024 season.
United Autosports USA
2 - Ben Hanley
The McLaren-adjacent squad is ready to roll after a mixed bag of results across North America and Europe. The team’s biggest catch was a sweep of the LMP2 classes at Le Mans, with its all-pro entry bolstered by then-IndyCar debutant Nolan Siegel. Two more class podiums followed suit in the European Le Mans Series including one for Hanley in the all-pro class at Catalunya, plus an IMSA LMP2 win at Road America. While the latter was their only podium on this side of the Atlantic, the team is generally known for keeping it clean throughout their races–and as it is often said, to finish first, you need to first finish.
Tower Motorsports
8 - Sebastien Bourdais
Just when you thought Scott McLaughlin had been an exciting enough driver to storm the Tower, in comes the French legend. The 2023 LMP2 winners at Sebring bring in one of the greatest on four wheels, coming off an excellent season with Cadillac which saw his stake in two wins and five podiums for the 01, finishing third in the season standings and second in the now five-leg Michelin Endurance Cup despite finishing last at Daytona and sixth at Indy. While Tower was not as strong in 2024 as they were in 2023, they still upheld a reliable streak of finishes and held their ground in midfield for most of the year. Don’t count them out for a bounceback.
TDS Motorsports
11 - Hunter McElrea
McElrea is the third driver after Colin Braun and Toby Sowery to debut on this list by virtue of the great Dale Coyne Gong Show of 2024, and he and TDS come into this season with some very promising results. In a deep LMP2 class, the team scored two wins and four podiums in seven races en route to the Michelin Endurance Cup win, those wins being a sweep of the last two enduros at Indy and Road Atlanta. The young Kiwi held down the supporting role for three of those high finishes, which also included a strong runner up effort at Sebring, and all signs point to more promising momentum this year.
Era Motorsport
18 - Ryan Dalziel
After an inconsistent 2023, Dalziel and Era Motorsport hit the ground running in 2024 with a Florida sweep (including Christian Rasmussen at Daytona) which put them right back in the thick of the LMP2 conversation. Although that was followed by two retirements, a pair of third place finishes helped cement a bounceback season which brought Era Motorsports back to third in the class championship and Michelin Endurance Cup. The discipline they needed last year to get their form back has come around, and now it’s time to see if they can uphold it and become title threats again.
PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports
52 - Benjamin Pedersen
The reigning LMP2 class champions trade in one young open wheeler (Pietro Fittipaldi) for another, as Pedersen makes his debut with the team. The 52 car got to the top last year off of consistency, only needing a single win at Mosport in their seven-race season to assert their position, with no finish worse than a seventh (out of 12) at Road America. Pedersen made three starts with Nielsen Racing in the European Le Mans LMP2 class, although the team itself struggled to hold pace throughout the season, with Pedersen contributing to the team’s best finish of tenth in class.
Pratt Miller Motorsports
73 - Pietro Fittipaldi / Callum Ilott
The names of Pratt and Miller are perhaps best known in sports car circles as associates of the Corvette GT3 factory team, but 2025 will see them add an LMP2 entry in parallel to their usual rides. To help them break their ride in, they’ve brought along Fittipaldi and Ilott who have both had their share of experience in prototypes and hypercars respectively over the past couple of seasons. Pietro finished fourth at Daytona last year with PR1/Mathiasen en route to their class championship and also made endurance starts with Rick Ware in 2023, while Ilott is fresh off a season with Hertz Team Jota in WEC, scoring a win at Spa and second place in Qatar.
AO Racing
99 - Christian Rasmussen
Everyone’s favorite dragon will be running amok in the paddock again as AO Racing begins their second season with their LMP2. While the team’s GT wins drew their biggest success in 2024, their prototype program got off to a very solid debut in their own right. The team finished sixth out of ten full-time entries in the IMSA LMP2 owner’s points, highlighted by a third place at Road America followed by fourth at Indianapolis, but their best class result came at Le Mans where they were second in the LMP2 pro-am class and sixth among all P2s. Bringing in a reigning class winner at Daytona in Rasmussen, it might be worth it to keep the gold paint on hand by the time Spike touches down in Sebring…
GT Daytona Pro (GTDP/GTD Pro) class Pfaff Motorsports
9 - James Hinchcliffe
New year, new manufacturer, same fun and (un)apologetic Canadian pride. After a season of mixed results with McLaren, Pfaff jumps to Lamborghini for the 2025 season looking to step it back up and dress the top of the podium with more plaid, and just as Hinchcliffe makes the jump from NBC to Fox on the broadcasting side, so goes his partnership with Pfaff. While the team is looking for their first win since Sebring in 2023, they did come close with a pair of second place finishes at Laguna Seca and Watkins Glen in 2024. With a little extra beef on the lumberjacks’ plate over the winter, can they pull off a comeback to start their season?
Vasser Sullivan Racing
14 - Kyle Kirkwood / Townsend Bell
Vasser Sullivan undergoes a few driver surprises for 2025, although the core of their two-car split-GTD-class effort remains largely intact if a bit shuffled. Kirkwood’s role in the all-pro car is the same as usual though, a long-form ringer who helped bring home victory at Sebring last year as the team finished fifth in the season class championship. One of the surprises though is past VSR driver Townsend Bell getting back into the seat which saw much of his late career success. A former GT class winner at Daytona and Le Mans in prior seasons before his jump to Lexus, Bell’s last appearance in the driver’s seat was in the 2022 Rolex festivities in their pro-am car, finishing third in the qualifying race and 15th in the main event.
Trackhouse by TF Sport
91 - Scott McLaughlin
Trackhouse’s Project 91 returns for 2025 in a much earlier race and perhaps a different car for their first appearance than most would have expected! Justin Marks and crew have already been on the forefront of some exciting driving opportunities in NASCAR (including Helio Castroneves’ upcoming Daytona 500 run!), and now his team makes their IMSA debut with a very popular foursome of drivers, including McLaughlin in his own GTD initiation. After winning Sebring in 2023 with Tower Motorsports in LMP2, the leader of the Thirsty Threes will feel back at his first home in a closed cockpit car, much like his many years running the Australian Supercars and two starts in the Bathurst 12 Hour, and the team will also be flanked by reigning Daytona LMP2 winner Connor Zilisch, former Bathurst 12 Hour overall winner Shane van Gisbergen, and the ageless gentleman wonder Ben Keating (once again attempting a P2/GT double duty). Is it too late for any of these guys to declare the 36 hour double?
GT Daytona (GTD) class Vasser Sullivan Racing
12 - Jack Hawksworth / Kyle Kirkwood
With the VSR driver shuffle comes a return to the GTD pro-am list as well, as Hawksworth becomes Parker Thompson’s partner of choice for the 2025 season. Their GTD class results held a similarly mixed bag to the 2024 season as their all-pro partner car, with a win at Long Beach and third at Petit Le Mans offset by retirements at Daytona and Indianapolis. The Long Beach win came in a one-off 89 car for Thompson and pro class driver Ben Barnicoat (otherwise holding station in the 14 both last and this year) to compromise for the race being held without the GTD Pro class. (It worked for VSR once in Detroit too.) As a part of his role in the 14 car the previous year, Hawksworth was among the Sebring winners for the team and now looks to claim another enduro win with the stable, while Kyle Kirkwood is scheduled to double down with both of the team’s cars this year. Would Kyle get to keep two Rolexes in one go if they swept the GTD classes?
DXDT Racing
36 - Robert Wickens
He may not be back behind the wheel of an Indy car, but the road to the top of the mountain for Robert Wickens ascends further on after rousing success in IMSA’s Michelin Pilot Challenge series. With three seasons at Bryan Herta Autosport, Wickens has claimed three race wins in the Touring Car class plus a championship in 2023 which included no wins but a relentless seven podiums and no finish worse than sixth. Surprising to some, this will not be his first appearance at the Rolex, as he ran for Starworks in the Prototype Challenge class in 2017, however that debut was suffered by a retirement where they finished last in class. Wickens also made his return to 24 hour racing with a run at the Nurburgring in 2024, although that was likewise cut short due to a crash. DXDT makes their IMSA debut this year after a dominant 2024 in the GT World Challenge America ranks, making this their proper initiation into major endurance racing.
Gradient Racing
66 - Tatiana Calderon
Another pairing quietly renewed for 2025 is Calderon and Gradient Racing, hoping to improve on another inconsistent season in the GTD category. Two early retirements set the tone for the team’s issues, but they did eventually rebound with three top ten finishes including fourth at Long Beach and third at Road America. Still though, this is a team which has claimed prior victory at Petit Le Mans, so they have the goods if they can make it to the end.
Forte Racing
78 - Franck Perera
The other French driver for Lamborghini with open wheel roots is Franck Perera, jumping to Forte after running with Iron Lynx in GTD Pro the previous season. A former two time winner at Daytona with the GRT Grasser organization, Perera is coming off yet another win on American soil after Iron Lynx had risen to the occasion at Petit Le Mans, also compiling a third place finish at Sebring. Forte’s 2024 season, which had included Devlin DeFrancesco for all five endurance races, looked a lot like their 2023–a slow start in Florida, return to form in the middle of the calendar, and two late podiums (second place at both Virginia International and Road Atlanta) to rebound to fifth in owner’s points. With a solid group of factory drivers plus NASCAR and NBC (and now CW) fan favorite Parker Kligerman stopping by, this bull might have what it takes to claim a class title if they could just lead off a little stronger.
Suggested links for additional reading, listening, and viewing pleasure:
/IMSARacing and /WEC
IMSA/WEC Discord
Andy Blackmore's Spotter Guides - track your favorite cars and liveries and keep tabs on who's still in the hunt!
https://www.imsa.com/ - Official site for IMSA and all its series.
IMSA Official - IMSA's official YouTube network, including full-length feeds of past races with Radio Le Mans commentary and the behind-the-scenes goods such as the Win the Weekend series (the 2024 season of which is an excellent way to catch up on the GTD classes).
Alkamel LiveScoring and Wytham Live Timing Aggregator - T&S alternatives to the IMSA feed. Choose LiveScoring if you like minimalism and efficiency, or Wytham if you like detail and interaction, including the ability to delay your scoring feed to sync with your viewing experience.
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2025.01.18 18:19 MacFrugals Watch - Playing NBA 2K14 in 2025….Mixtape 02
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2025.01.18 18:19 QuizzicalPineapple Pngtuber + Mic not working?
So I have my model and everything ready, I had tested it out recently and everything worked, the toggles, the speaking animations everything.
As part of the project I upgraded my pc by buying new parts (graphics card, new cpu and a bit of extra ram)
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A friend’s parents found this die among some of their games and had no idea what it could have been a part of. They don’t remember ever using it.
It’s a 20-sided die, but numbers on the sides range from 26-64 and one side has the letter “B”.
Last image is all the numbers on the die in numerical order.
Any help solving this mystery would be appreciated!
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2025.01.18 18:19 MacFrugals Published on YouTube: Playing NBA 2K14 in 2025….Mixtape 02
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2025.01.18 18:19 cornbreadnclabber Don’t sleep on Braums
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2025.01.18 18:19 SanaBrina2 What did you understand about your parents and your childhood, now that you have your own kids?
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She made two posts, clarifying that it’s 173K miles.
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2025.01.18 18:19 jb4647 Saw “The Brutalist” last night and it’s an instant Criterion essential
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