Meyer Shank Racing Reigns Supreme, Wins Back To Back Rolex 24s

After 24 hours and nearly 800 laps of close quarter, tight knight racing with storylines aplenty, it was Meyer Shank Racing headed up by British driver Tom Blomqvist and 4-time Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves that came out on top as the overall winners of this year’s edition of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, denying Wayne Taylor Racing their 5th Rolex 24 in the last 7 years. With the win, Helio Castroneves becomes just the third driver to win 3 straight Rolex 24s in the overall.

“I knew we had a fantastic car…I just have to say a massive well done to everyone who worked on this project,” Blomqvist said after the victory in an interview with NBC Sports. “These guys are…big props to everyone!” added Castroneves.

Blomqvist started on pole and led the opening hours before Scott Dixon took over the race lead at the 6 hour mark, allowing his teammates in the 10 to lead overnight before late night trouble pushed the WTR team 2 laps back and near out of contention. But Wayne Taylor Racing, as they will do, battled back and got back on the lead lap with under 2 hours left and a daring move on a late restart put Felipe Albuquerque in position to take the win away from the 60, but just didn’t have enough at the end, settling for a 2nd place finish. Renger Van Der Zande finished 3rd, Earl Bamber 4th and Alex Sims finished 5th.

One of the stories to watch was the 57 team – taking the pole in GT3, wrecked in practice, got forced to the rear, lost one of their drivers to injury and having to call in a backup driver. They looked to be on pace for a class win before late race issues brought their dreams to a halt.

Outside of the new GTP class and the overall, we saw James Allen win for Proton in LMP2 in an exciting finish over Ben Hanley, Wayne Boyd took home the LMP3 class win, Maro Engel and WeatherTech Racing got the checkers in GTD Pro and Marco Sorenson took the flag in GT Daytona.

Michael Nebbia