Williams Esports Playseat lead early on at the 2024 iRacing Daytona 24 Hour race, as once again over 15,000 sim racers take battle on the deceptively tough Daytona Road Course. 50 drivers took the green flag, and outside of early calamity, the race has been relatively clean to boot.

In GTP, it was right as the lights went green that we saw the biggest incident of the day, as 5 cars were involved in an incident before the field even went through Turn 1. 4 cars were stuck on pit road after this, spending over 7 minutes getting repairs.

In addition the #10 MAHLE RACING TEAM (Niklas Beu) spent over a minute on pit lane at the start of the race, and therefore are at the rear of the running GTPs.

The #6 Williams Esports Playseat machine being piloted by Atte Kauppinen holds the early advantage with an 8.1 second gap over VRS Coanda Esports’ #18 driven by Charlie Collins. Behind there’s a small pack of cars from P2 – P5, with Apex Racing Team (#98), Williams Esports Fanatec (#5) and DRAGO Racing GTP all looking for a podium position.

LMP2

In LMP2, it is WSR Esports Buttkicker leading the way by 4.3 seconds over MAG Performance LMP2. The field were close through the first two rounds of pitstops, but are now just beginning to stretch out a bit. ALL cars in class are on the same lap as each other, which is doubly impressive as they have 17 cars in their field. This is the class requiring the most pitstops, and even though fuel and tyres can be taken at the same time, the strategy time strategy will be dictated by the number of driver changes.

GTD

Even though there were 6 different cars to choose from in GTD, only two were chosen in the top split, with the Mercedes AMG and Ferrari 296 taking to track. Here, the Apex Racing Team have already gone to an alternate strategy with their two cars, as they learned early on that it’s almost impossible to go to the hour mark on fuel, especially during daylight. As a consequence they have a 15 second advantage to third place and Williams Esports BenQ, but this is one where mathematics and sticking to a plan will be critically important.

Coverage continues all race long on RaceSpot TV and RaceSpot News, with full text updates here, and coverage on RaceSpot TV and iRacing’s YouTube channels. 

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