Weekend Notebook: cars warm up at Daytona for the 24 Hours

Daytona International Speedway hosted seven free practice sessions over the weekend, ahead of the eagerly anticipated 63rd edition of the 24 Hours, the opening round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship featuring no fewer than eight Ferraris. The weekend also marked the debut of the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge series, with Ferrari one of three manufacturers present.

The second and final race in the 24H Series Middle East was contested in the UAE with the 6 Hours of Abu Dhabi, while in Portugal, Ferrari’s one-make series cars starred in round one of the GT Winter Series at the Estoril circuit. 

IMSA SportsCar Championship. The annual Roar Before the 24 Hours of Daytona concluded on Sunday afternoon after three busy days of testing for numerous Ferrari teams.  

GTD Pro. The No. 81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3 strongly established itself as a quick GTD Pro class competitor throughout the Roar event weekend.

DragonSpeed finished within the top three during four of the category’s practice sessions, the final of which was hampered by heavy rain. The team’s best lap time of one minute, 48.263 seconds came on Friday afternoon at the hands of Albert Costa. 

GTD. A staggering seven Ferraris ran at the Roar event in the GTD class. Of Friday’s two practices, the No. 21 AF Corse entry finished best of the Ferraris and within the top three on both occasions. It was then the No. 021 Triarsi Competizione that paved the way in Saturday’s three practices, finishing as high as second in the afternoon.

Triarsi’s second entry, the No. 023 Ferrari, followed with its best performance on Friday afternoon in seventh place, while AF Corse saw its No. 50 Ferrari post lap times within the top 10 twice, including fourth place on Sunday afternoon. 

Inception Racing, a team that joined the Ferrari stable at the end of 2024, represented the manufacturer inside the top 10 of each practice session at the ROAR and was quickest in the GTD class on Sunday morning. 

Conquest Racing, meanwhile, battled adversity throughout the ROAR but emerged resilient as it overcame obstacles in multiple sessions but persevered on track.

The final practice on Sunday afternoon, restricted to Bronze drivers only, allowed additional track time for both Cetilar Racing – which posted top-10 lap times in four Roar practices – and AF Corse. 

In the seven sessions the fastest Ferrari was the number 21 of AF Corse, thanks to the time set by Alessandro Pier Guidi (1:48.131). 

IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge. Ferrari dominated the podium at Daytona International Speedway in the series’ season-opening weekend. 

The brand walked away with five trophies in the GTDX class, a category that was introduced in 2025 to bring GT3-specification machinery to the series for the first time in its history.

Saturday. In Race 1 on Saturday afternoon, sunny skies prevailed over Daytona and drivers were fast out of the gate. In his first race with Ferrari, AJ Muss tackled the learning curve quickly and gained the most positions of drivers in the GTDX field. Within five minutes, the former snowboarding Olympian jumped from ninth to fifth and ultimately crossed the finish line second at the checkered flag. 

“It feels really good to march through the field,” said Muss after the race. “AF Corse Ferrari gave me a phenomenal car”.

Former Ferrari Challenge North America race winner and Muss’ AF Corse teammate, Matias Perez Companc, also finished on the podium in third after starting second and enduring great battles throughout the sprint race. 

Behind Muss and Companc was David Musial Sr., who finished just off the podium in fourth but scored the first GTDX Bronze category win of the year. Musial captured the position in the final minute of action and finished less than three tenths ahead of his competitor in fifth. David Musial Jr. followed his father with an eighth-place finish. 

Sunday. Race 2 on Sunday afternoon brought contrasting conditions for drivers as heavy rain fell over Daytona for the majority of the morning and into the early afternoon.

Matias Perez Companc handled the slippery track with ease, starting fourth-in-class and working his way up to second place by the race’s end.

“I didn’t expect to be here a month ago” Companc described. “I’m new to the GT3 car, so it was a pretty good debut with the 296 GT3 and start of the season.” 

Meanwhile, AJ Muss had a more favorable starting position than the day prior and led the field to the green flag from pole position. However, while avoiding a slower car from another class, Muss spun his 296 GT3 but rejoined the pack after a mid-race yellow flag. Then as he did on Saturday, Muss stormed through field and back onto the podium in third for his second trophy of the weekend. 

For the pair of Conquest Racing entries, the younger Musial finished seventh while the elder finished close behind in eighth. 

Schedule. The IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge prepares for its second event of the season at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas on February 28 – March 1. 

24H Series. The Prancing Horse’s best result in the 6 Hours of Abu Dhabi, the second and final round of the 24H Series Middle East, was a fourth-place finish in the Pro-Am class. Into Africa Racing by Dragon Racing’s Ferrari 296 GT3, crewed by Xollie Letlaka, Axcil Jefferies, Stuart White, and Blake McDonald, matched its fourth-place finish at the 24 Hours of Dubai a week earlier. 

The UAE-based team, which set off third from the starting grid and second in the Pro-Am class based on the average lap times across three qualifying sessions, finished the race 10th overall. They also set the fastest lap across all classes, with a time of 1’52”089 on the 146th of the 159 laps completed. 

Scuderia Praha’s number 56 with Miroslav Výboh, Matúš Výboh and Josef Král finished eighteenth overall and eighth in the Pro-Am class, while US team Era Motorsport’s number 81 with Dwight Merriman, Kyle Tilley and Britain’s Jake Hill closed 21st overall and 11th in class.

In the Am class, Baron Motorsport’s Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 number 86, driven by Philippe Prette, Angelo Negro, Edoardo Bacci, and Masoud Jaberian, arrived 7th in class and 25th overall. 

With the Middle Eastern events completed, the series heads to Italy for round one of the 2025 European Series championship at the Mugello circuit in Tuscany from 21 to 23 March. 

GT Winter Series. The opening round of the series kicked off with three races contested at the Fernanda Piras da Silva circuit in Estoril, with Sunday’s two outings held with the annoyance of rain. The championship will continue with six more rounds in the Iberian Peninsula, the first of which is next weekend in Portimão. 

Maranello’s one-make series cars scored two overall wins and several podiums. Andreas Bogh Sorensen, in AF Corse’s Ferrari 296 Challenge number 76, bagged one overall victory and one-third place over the weekend, earning two Cup 1 class wins for cars also competing in the Ferrari Challenge. Rui Aguas claimed an overall victory in Race-2 with AF Corse’s Ferrari number 50. However, he finished second in the 55-minute third race, just behind Bogh Sorensen, while his teammate Christiano Maciel secured third place in Cup 1 during the weekend’s opening race. The third Ferrari 296 Challenge, number 150 of the Portuguese team Araùjo Competição, secured second place in Race-2 courtesy of Gonzalo Araújo, while his teammate, Álvaro Ramos, achieved two third-place finishes in Cup 1.

Oscar Ryndziewicz dominated the Cup 5 class, reserved for Ferrari Challenge 488 Evo cars, in the number 80 Ferrari of MERTEL Motorsport, winning all three races and finishing twice in the overall top ten.