Mike Rockenfeller made it a sweep of the top four for the Corvette DP in the #90 Spirit of Daytona entry with his teammates Richard Westbrook and Michael Valiante finishing two laps off the overall winners. The top LMP2 car the #6 Muscle Milk Pickett Racing Oreca-Nissan of Lucas Luhr, Klaus Graf and Alex Brundle in fifth position three laps down.
This is the second Daytona victory for Fittipaldi and Barbosa, they won in 2004 and 2010 respectively. This is Bourdais' first career Daytona victory. The Frenchman has finished second overall three times in his home race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Bourdais is the first Frenchman to win at Daytona since Emmanuel Collard won alongside Wayne Taylor and Max Angelelli in 2005. This is GM's first overall win since 2005 as well when Pontiac was the winning engine manufacture and this is Chevrolet's first win as an engine manufacture since the Corvette C5-R won overall in 2001.
Patrick Pilet finished sixth overall and won the GTLM class in the #911 Porsche 911 RSR with teammates Richard Lietz and Nick Tandy. Joey Hand got the #55 BMW Z4 GTE within a second of the Porsche in the closing laps but ultimately came home in second, 2.838 seconds back after hitting lapped traffic. Bill Auberlen, Andy Priaulx and Maxime Martin rounded out the #55 driver line-up. The #91 Viper of Marc Goossens, Dominik Farnbacher and Ryan Hunter-Reay finished third in class.
This was Lietz's second career class victory at Daytona while first for both his teammates. Lietz won in 2012 while driving for Magnus Racing.
The #54 CORE Autosport Oreca won from pole position in the Prototype Challenge class with drivers Colin Braun, Jon Bennett, James Gue and Mark Wilkins. It was CORE Autosport's second win on the day as the team fields the factory Porsches in GTLM. A lap back of the #54 was 8Star Motorsports in second with drivers Tom Kimber-Smith, Enzo Potolicchio, Michael Marsal and Rob Huff. The #38 Performance Tech Oreca finished third in class with drivers Tomy Drissi, Raphael Matos, David Ostella, Gabriel Casagranda and Júlio Campos.
This is the first career Daytona class victory for all four CORE Autosport drivers.
GTD saw a controversial finish. On the final lap, the #555 Level 5 Motorsports Ferrari of Alesssandro Pier Guidi and the #45 Flying Lizard Audi R8 LMS of Markus Winkelhock were nose-to-tail as they entered the infield section. The two cars went side-by-side through the kink with Pier Guidi on the inside and Winkelhock on the outside. As they exited the corner, the #45 slide wide and off track, handing the Ferrari the lead and what appeared to be the win in class.
After taking the checkered flag, the #555 was penalized a stop and hold for seventy-five second penalty for unavoidable contact, dropping the car off the GTD podium. However, on replay it was clear no contact was made between the two cars.
Provisionally, the #45 Audi of Winkelhock, Spencer Pumpelly, Tim Pappas and Nelson Canache are the GTD winners, giving Audi back-to-back class victories at Daytona. The #58 Snow Racing Porsche of Madison Snow, Jan Heylen and Marco Siefried finished second with the #72 SMP Racing Ferrari of Mikhail Aleshin, Mika Salo, Maurizio Mediani, Boris Rotenberg and Sergey Zlobin rounding out the podium. The #555 Ferrari finished fourth after the penalty.
Provisionally, this is Pumpelly's third career class win at Daytona having won in 2006 and 2011. This is the first Daytona class victory for the other three Flying Lizard drivers.
The next round for the Tudor United SportsCar Championship is the 12 Hours of Sebring on Saturday March 15th.
