If you haven't read part 1 of our in-depth analysis of this year's 24 Hours of Daytona, you may want to read that first before reading part 2.
Phil Oakley
And, if you really don't want to read that, a brief tl;dr: Porsche stayed mostly in the shadows in the first half of the race, leading for periods at a time but never with a sustained lead and pace over other cars or teams. They took a 1-2 towards the half way of the race, with Felipe Nasr leading in the #7 and Matt Campbell in second onboard the #6 car.
At this point, Nasr held at six second gap over Campbell, who also had a similar gap — to within a few thousandths of a second — to Meyer Shank Acura's Scott Dixon.
Yellows breed yellows
However, the 1-2 wouldn't actually last that long. A caution, the eighth of the race, saw all the GTPs pit. Braun, who'd taken over from Dixon in the #60 Acura, now led from BMW's Kevin Magnussen, with Campbell third and Nasr's teammate in the #7 car, Nick Tandy, fourth.
The race went green again on lap 397, but as we always say in racing — yellows breed yellows.
In the three minutes of racing between cautions, Campbell took second off Tandy.
Because the ninth caution was soon so after the eighth, a wave around wasn't required. The race went green again on lap 402, with just under 11 hours and 20 minutes remaining.
Looking at the average laps for the next hour (or more accurately, the next 55 minutes; spoiler, that was how long this green flag period lasted), Campbell was almost two tenths faster per lap than Braun. In between these two was Magnussen, just a few hundredths slower per lap on average than Campbell.
The Australian, in the #6 Porsche, duly took the lead off Braun at the bus stop Le Mans chicane. He duly ran away from Braun, with the GTPs pitting in between. But, as ever in IMSA, the next caution was just around the corner — the 10th of the race.
Mathieu Jaminet replaced Campbell in the #6 at the pit stops under caution, while Laurens Vanthoor was now in the #7. At the restart, lap 449 with 9 hours and 50 minutes remaining, Jaminet kept the lead with L.Vanthoor in fifth.
This is when Porsche really began consolidating their lead. Jaminet fended off Acura's Tom Blomqvist, in the #60 car, for the lead for almost 20 laps, with the Briton sometimes getting to win a couple of tenths to the Porsche.
L. Vanthoor, meanwhile, made his way up the field, passing Raffaele Marciello in the #24 BMW, and Ricky Taylor, of the #10 Cadillac V-Series.R, to take third. He then began challenging Blomqvist, slowing the Acura up and enabling Jaminey to pull away to take a five second lead.
On lap 469, L. Vanthoor finally took second off the Briton to give Porsche a 1-2 again.
Looking at the average lap times for this period is quite interesting. While the #60 Acura, which had Dixon, Blomqvist and Felix Rosenqvist at the wheel during this period, had a faster average lap time, the two Porsches were slightly quicker in terms of top 20% average lap time. Similarly, the #24 BMW had a slightly slower average lap and top 20% average lap time.
Looking at the pitstop data, the two Porsches did spend around 10 seconds less in the pits during this almost four hour period with no cautions.
But the gap was extended by pure grunt work from the Porsche drivers, just lapping consistently and slowly but surely building a gap to the cars behind.
When the next caution came out, the lead over Eng in the #24 and Dixon, onboard the #60, was up to almost a minute. Of course, this was eradicated by the caution, but that's how IMSA works and the manufacturers know this.
Anyway. At the end of the caution, the Porsches still led from Dixon and Magnussen, who was back in the #24 after taking over from Eng. Dixon would receive a drive-through penalty for pit lane speeding, promoting Magnussen to third.
The former F1 driver quickly passed Campbell to take second, and began to hunt down Tandy, who had used the opportunity to run away again, creating a gap of around three seconds, depending on traffic.
In terms of average lap times for this period, laps 609-711, Magnussen was the fastest driver on track in terms of top 20% averages, laps that would have been unaffected, or mostly unaffected at least, by traffic.
The Porsche drivers were actually slower than many of their rivals when looking at this metric, although only by a few tenths.
However, the Porsche drivers made up the time lost in outright fastest averages by having much quicker overall averages. We can take from that that they were faster through traffic, either taking more risks than their rivals, or simply able to better manage it.
Magnussen was over a second slower in terms of overall averages, compared to Kevin Estre, who was fastest. With this being the Dane's first sportscar race in quite a while — in between his stints in F1 he did a year at the Chip Ganassi Racing-run Cadillac squad — it makes sense that he was maybe not taking all the risks through traffic.
Lap 713 saw the 13th, and penultimate, caution of the race. At this point, Tandy, had stopped a few laps before and handed over to Felipe Nasr, who would finish the race in the #7 Porsche.
There were now less than 2 hours left in the race when it went green. Crunch time.
Nasr led from Dries Vanthoor, in the #24 BMW. The rapid Belgian had been quick at the start, and BMW hoped similar track conditions, and the same driver, would propel BMW to victory.
Of course, as we know, D. Vanthoor came unstuck by making contact with a GT car at turn 6. This broke the front bodywork and impacted the aerodynamics and balance of the car, leading D. Vanthoor to have to pit before the end, finishing fourth.
When you look at the average pace of these final two hours, it's surprising just how close the BMW and #60 Acura, with Tom Blomqvist at the wheel, were to the two Porsches.
In fact, the #7 Porsche of Nasr was not the quickest car, in both top 20% average laptimes for the final two hours of the race. This award went to his teammate, Matt Campbell, in the #6 machine.
With the final caution done and the race back to green with under 40 minutes to go, it was really time to throw caution to the wind. Campbell led at the restart from D. Vanthoor and Nasr, with Blomqvist fourth. Almost immediately, Nasr overtook the BMW in front of him, with D. Vanthoor now really struggling with broken front bodywork.
The German manufacturer had opted not to fix or replace it at the stop under caution, and the Belgian had to pit under green in order to have it replaced.
It was now a three horse race between Campbell, Nasr and Blomqvist. Despite Nasr being slightly slower in terms of average 20% in these final 20 laps, he was faster in the overall average, taking more risks in traffic.
He duly caught and passed Campbell for the lead on lap 768, with just 20 minutes remaining.
After losing the lead, though, Campbell had to fend off Blomqvist. Unfortunately for Porsche, the dream of a 1-2 at Daytona wasn't to be. Blomqvist passed the Porsche with just minutes left in the race. The Briton set about catching Nasr, and he had the pace to do so. Although the gap came down by around half a second in the five minutes left in the race, it wasn't enough time to catch the Brazilian.
After the race, Blomqvist told media, in response to a question by The Racing Line, that if he'd had more time, he believed he could have caught Nasr.
'I think honestly we had really good pace there at the end,' said Blomqvist.
'I think I had a little bit of extra pace on them.
'It's difficult to say. Maybe if there was 10 minutes more, we might — might — have got to the back of them. But, I mean, who knows?
'I think going into that stint I didn't actually expect to be able to fight them. When I knew I had a chance, I just kind of gave it everything, and thankfully we managed to get one of them. So yeah, very, very happy for that,' he concluded.
In the end, though, Porsche took the spoils and were able to claim a second consecutive Daytona victory with the 963.
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