Porsche 911 RSR After 18 Hours & 585 laps At Daytona – Video

After 18 hours and 585 laps on the 5.729-kilometre Daytona International Speedway, the best Porsche 911 RSR with the starting number 912 is running in fifth place in the GTLM class.

Drivers and teams have completed three quarters of the distance at the 24 Hours of Daytona, the traditional season-opener of the IMSA SportsCar Championship and the North American Endurance Cup. On Sunday morning, the best Porsche 911 RSR with the starting number 912 is running in fifth place in the GTLM class. Sharing the cockpit is the two-time outright Le Mans winner Earl Bamber (New Zealand) as well as Laurens Vanthoor (Belgium) and Gianmaria Bruni (Italy). The Porsche GT Team’s second 911 RSR with the starting number 911, driven by Patrick Pilet (France) and his teammates Nick Tandy (Great Britain) and Frédéric Makowiecki (France), had taken the lead of the strongly represented GT field late on Saturday evening but fell back to eighth place during the night.

After eight hours and 293 laps of the spectacular long distance classic in Florida, the Porsche GT Team had to finally give up hope of claiming the 78th class win. Nick Tandy, the 2015 Le Mans overall winner, lost control of his 911 RSR in the Bus Stop chicane, slid at high speed over the green strip, which was still damp after a shower, and crashed into a stack of tyres. His racer was so badly damaged that it had to be pushed straight into the workshop for repairs after returning to the pits. The crew of mechanics immediately set to work and managed to get Tandy back on the track after 20 minutes. Because of this incident, he lost 13 laps to the class leader and was relegated from fourth to eighth. Another crash at the same spot during the night cost more valuable time.