If the race were to be won and lost in qualifying, it’s clear that Ferrari would have a big advantage, occupying the first five spots for the 2026 iRacing Daytona 24 H. But much more imperative for the race was the position of Drago, first and third in qualifying and after the first laps, they held a one-two.
Their #5 car broke away, holding 1.6 seconds over the rest by the first stops, but they struggled to keep first and second their own until two hours were complete. That was because a Coanda mistake gave them those positions, and despite a brief interruption by Redline, this held until the second half of the race.
A battle ensued between the two as the sun began to rise, but bigger drama was to come. As the #5 Drago Racing Ferrari was exiting the pitlane with six hours to go, an LMP2 entrant came alongside. Unsighted, made side-to-side contact, which put them in the wall, elevating the existing fight to one for the victory.
However, Drago always held an advantage in strategy right to the end, despite Coanda’s superior pace, and Team Redline catching up in the BMW behind. In the final hour, Drago stopped with 43 minutes to go, having saved only just enough fuel to cut out the pitstop that would’ve lost them the race.
Coanda pitted 10 minutes later, coming out 35 seconds behind, while Redline were over 10 seconds behind them after their last stop with half an hour remaining. Some fuel saving from Dries van Langendonck, and some nervous laps later for the Drago team, meant they would win the race by 33.9 seconds, claim the most feted iRacing special event for the very first time.
This betters their second place in 2024, while Coanda’s wait for a seventh victory will stretch to six years. For Team Redline, their bafflingly understated Daytona 24 record continues, with no overall wins in 12 attempts.
In LMP2, a pair of teams shared each half of the race in the lead. Szese Esport broke away after the first pitstops with Effect Simultations, who eventually fell back after 2 hours and 30 minutes. They were comfortably leading right until the halfway point, where an incident gave Grid and Go the lead.
From there, even though Deletraz Automotive were never too far back, last year’s overall winners succeeded in the other prototype class this time around by 15 seconds. Mattperformance.com, who were in the lead even throughout the final pitstop cycle of the race, came in third.
Daytona is always about slipstream, but there’s no class where that is more apparent than in GTD, as there were 13 cars in the leading train after the first stint. It took until the fifth pitstops of the race for Drago Racing to break away alone, and another hour for Williams to get organised enough to begin a chase with 18 hours to go.
One trip around the clock later, they’d caught and passed, just as Drago’s leading GTP was getting into their big incident. Williams escaped just as quickly as they’d caught, and they had a photo finish for the win, with the team allowing Beckham Jacir and Parker White to decide the victory amongst themselves. White took the win by six hundredths.
The iRacing Daytona 24 Hours didn’t quite have the nighttime drama of last year’s addition, where F1 World Champion Max Verstappen crashed in the rain. But it had late tension in spades, and three different teams deserving of their class victories.
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