In a flash, one month of 2026 is complete. What was once silent is now humming along as the motorsports season has gotten underway. It is not singing at full voice, but it is loud enough to have your attention. Plenty of marquee events have taken place, and that is what makes January special. There are events you cannot ignore.
January is a good starter to the year. You get enough to be satisfied but not gorge yourself on. There are still a few lulls to come as the season builds, but there have been a few big weekends to put you on edge. More is to come, and there is a good reason to be excited.
Another 24 Hours Behind Us
We end the month of January reviewing the 24 Hours of Daytona, which concluded last weekend. So much happens in a 24-hour race that you need a few days to sift through it all, especially when four classes finish as tightly as they did this year in Daytona.
History was made, as seems to be a regular occurrence now at Daytona. There were plenty of popular winners. There was also some not-so-popular weather that took over more than a quarter of the race. This year's 24 Hours of Daytona at least has something memorable that we will carry with us for years, and that is before we even got to the checkered flag.
A winner requires his own attention.
Flowers for Felipe Nasr
For the third consecutive year, Felipe Nasr has won the 24 Hours of Daytona. Nasr joined Peter Gregg and Hélio Castroneves as the only drivers to win Daytona's famed endurance three consecutive times. Five years ago, only Gregg had done it. Now it has happened twice. It is an incredible achievement either way, what makes Nasr's streak more incredible is he has done it with seven different co-drivers, and none of them have won twice in this three-year period.
This was not a case of a pairing or a trio carrying on for years. Nasr won in 2024 with co-driver Dane Cameron, endurance driver Matt Campbell, and then Josef Newgarden was also in that team. Ahead of the 2025 season, Porsche Penske Motorsport changed its lineups as Cameron was released, Nick Tandy moved over to the #7 Porsche with Nasr, and Laurens Vanthoor became the endurance driver. This year, Tandy was moved to GTD Pro with AO Racing, Julien Andlauer moved in as the full-time co-driver after spending a season in the FIA World Endurance Championship with Porsche Penske, and Laurin Heinrich was promoted to the endurance driver role after experiencing great success in GTD Pro with AO Racing.
I am not sure we can find another scenario of that in the major endurance races.
Castroneves won his first 24 Hours of Daytona with Wayne Taylor Racing before moving to Meyer Shank Racing. In each of his years with MSR, Tom Blomqvist and Simon Pagenaud were two of his co-drivers. Gregg and Hurley Haywood each won in 1973 and 1975. No race was held in 1974 due to the energy crisis. Gregg then won with Brian Redman and John Fitzpatrick in 1976.
Let's expand this to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Ten drivers have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in three consecutive years. Nine drivers have done it three consecutive years and then Tom Kristensen won it six consecutive years.
Woolf Barnato won in 1928-30. Barnato had a different co-driver all three years (Bernard Rubin, Henry Birkin and Glen Kidston).
Olivier Gendebien won the 1960 race with Paul Frère, but then Gendebien won in 1961 and 1962 with Phil Hill.
Henri Pescarolo won the 1972 race with Graham Hill, but Pescarolo won the following two years with fellow Frenchman Gérard Larrousse.
Jacky Ickx won three consecutive years after Pescarolo's three-year streak. Ickx had a different co-driver every year. In 1975, it was Derek Bell. In 1976, it was Gijs van Lennep. In 1977, it was Jürgen Barth and Hurley Haywood.
Then you get to the 2000s and in 2000, 2001 and 2002, Tom Kristensen, Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro won all three years with Audi.
In 2005, another three-year winning streak began with Marco Werner. Werner won with Kristensen and JJ Lehto. In the next two years, Werner won with Biela and Pirro.
Flash forward to 2018, and Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima started their three-year winning streaks. In the first two years, Fernando Alonso was their third driver. In 2020, Brendon Hartley was a part of the team.
Focusing on Kristensen for a second, we know the first half of his record winning streak came with the same two co-drivers, Biela and Pirro. In 2003 and 2004, Kristensen had Rinaldo Capello with him. The other co-driver in 2003 was Guy Smith at Bentley. In 2004, Seiji Ara rounded out the Team Goh Audi R8 lineup. Then there was Lehto and Werner in 2005.
Nasr had the same total of different co-drivers in his three-year Daytona winning streak than Kristensen had in his six-year Le Mans winning streak (seven).
Focusing on Nasr for a second, his ability has been no secret for a long-time now, but it feels like in the last three seasons he has drawn everyone's attention. He already had a championship from his time with Whelen Racing in 2021, but he won another championship in 2024. This was his third Daytona victory. He also has won the 12 Hours of Sebring twice, the 6 Hours of the Glen twice, and he has a Petit Le Mans victory. Let's not forget his brief stint in Formula One where he finished fifth on debut with Sauber.
He has been a special talent for a long time, but we do not celebrate that talent enough in sports car racing, and part of it could be that sports car racing is a multi-driver discipline. You do not know how much is one driver or the other, and you must appreciate both, but Nasr is on his third different co-driver in three years. He has won a championship elsewhere. We can no longer ignore how much comes down to Nasr alone.
Later this year, Nasr will turn 34 years old. There is a long career ahead of him. It could continue in sports car racing. He is comfortably in IMSA, and with Porsche's exit from the world championship, it is unclear where else it could go. He could be in the world championship and leading a team there to championships and victories at Le Mans. He could also turn his career to IndyCar. He is in the Team Penske fold. He was on the doorstep of his debut at St. Petersburg in March 2020 with Carlin before the event was stopped in its tracks due to the pandemic. Penske brought Scott McLaughlin to IndyCar from a successful Supercars career. Josef Newgarden's contract is not secure beyond 2026. There could be an opening and Penske might already have its man in house.
We are going to see more extraordinary things from Nasr. We are still at the start.
Foggy
I went to bed around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday. I woke up a little after 5:15 a.m. on Sunday. At that point, the 24 Hours of Daytona had been under caution since 12:45 a.m. due to fog. The race would not restart until 7:19 a.m.
It happens. I was a little surprised there was not a red flag at some point, especially since the 2004 race came to mind, but I remembered this race now has 24-hour broadcast coverage. It wasn't that long ago the race would go dark at midnight and coverage would resume at 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. There was no way to watch the race in the United States.
With the race now being covered, caution laps are going to keep whatever few people that are awake watching. Not that anyone is trying to keep viewers engaged at 3:00 a.m. Eastern. This is a global race and I do wonder what the viewership is like in Europe when it is the middle of the morning. They must understand why there are so few cameras up. It is the same way here in the United States with the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Around 7:00 p.m. Eastern, Le Mans becomes a lot of onboard shots and some cuts to stationary cameras, but if the cars are not moving, people are going to tune out.
It is curious to me to decide to do one thing or the other. It is a lose-lose situation. This was just a parade with the occasional pit stop. It didn't do nothing to the race, and the running order was changing, but it was rather uneventful. No one is thrilled to see cars running at 60 miles per hour.
Drive Times
As much fun as the 24 Hours of Daytona is, there are a few tweaks I would like to see. Drive time minimums is one of them.
For starters, the minimum drive time should be higher in the professional classes. I think the minimum should be four or five hours for all the classes, and I think everyone should run an hour in the final quarter of the race.
I don't like that in the pro-am categories everyone is trying to get the amateur out of the way. I think in the pro-am classes, the amateurs should get a say in the final quarter of the race. I think every driver should run at least an hour in the final quarter of the race. I don't think everyone should be rushing to get the amateurs done before the first quarter of the race is over. There should be more strategy in the driver shifts, and that goes for the professional classes as well.
It is not as big of an issue in the professional classes. For starters, some of those cars are only running three drivers. Almost all of them are doing at least six hours or so. Laurin Heinrich ran the least in the #7 Porsche, and he still did five hours and five minutes.
To be fair, in GTP, the only driver not to clear four hours driving was Colin Braun (3:07:44).
The notable case this year is in GTD Pro, the minimum for bronze-rather drivers in the class was reduced to three-and-a-half-hours, one hour less than originally announced. This only affected two drivers, Kenny Habul in the #75 75 Express Mercedes-AMG and Scott Noble in the #48 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG. Noble did 3:33:02. Habul did 3:33:36.
It is kind of a moot point but I think the race would be better if more drivers were competing late in the race. Filipe Albuquerque didn't turn a lap after 6:23 a.m. Connor Zilisch was out of the car at 6:13 a.m. Kakunoshin Ohta was finished at 4:00 a.m.! Even A.J. Allmendinger was done before the final quarter of the race began (7:07 a.m.). I don't think that is a good thing. I think every driver should still be in play after sunrise on Sunday.
Well... They Were There
For the third consecutive year, we are covering an overlooked aspect of the 24 Hours of Daytona. The drivers that raced... but technically never did race because they could not get into the car before the car retired, and you better believe this year's list is something special.
With all the early incidents and retirements, a fair number of drivers, and a fair number of notable names never got to race in this year's 24 Hours of Daytona, even though their names will be listed in the record book forever as participating in the race.
For starters, last year, only one car failed to complete 100 laps. Only seven out of 61 starters failed to complete 300 laps.
This year's race saw four cars fail to complete 100 laps. Now, 55 of 60 started completed over 500 laps. I think losing a quarter of the race to fog helped a lot of these teams reach that lap total. Only 11 cars were not running at the end of the race. That is rather impressive even if a quarter of the race was lost due to fog.
How about those drivers that did not complete a lap in this year's race?
Let's start with the first car out because the #28 RS1 Porsche only completed five laps, 12 minutes and 26 seconds of the race before Erik Zitza spun and hit the attenuator at the end of the pit wall in the middle of turn one. It will not surprise you to learn that Zitza was the only driver to have turned a lap in that entry. Who didn't get to race?
How about 2022 Daytona GTD class winner Jan Heylen? And 2025 GT World Challenge Endurance Cup champion Sven Müller? And 2017 Continental Tires Sports Car Challenge GS champion Dillon Machavern?
That is a pretty good trio. Apparently, this was Machavern's first Daytona entry since the 2020 24 Hours of Daytona. He will have to wait another year to actually run in the race. Müller was making his first Daytona appearance since 2021, but this was not the first time Müller did not complete a lap during the race. It was actually the third!
In 2016, Müller's Daytona debut, he did not make a lap in the #59 Manthey Racing Porsche as it retired after 61 laps due to a mechanical issue. Three years later, Müller was with NGT Motorsport, and the #99 Porsche's race was over after 47 laps, none of which saw Müller behind the wheel. In seven 24 Hours of Daytona starts, Müller has completed zero laps three times. Brutal!
We were just a little over two hours into the race when the #62 Risi Competizione Ferrari spun and had damage after contact with the #033 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari. At that point, Davide Rigon and Daniel Serra had gotten into the car. Defending World Endurance Drivers' Champion Alessandro Pier Guidi had not gotten into the car, nor would Pier Guidi get the chance.
Later in the race, the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche and the #83 AF Corse Oreca had an incident in turn five. Though the #83 Oreca would return to the track after nearly an hour-and-a-half being repaired, it would not last much longer. In the case of the #120 Porsche, Callum Ilott and Tom Sargent had yet to get into the car prior to the incident. For the #83 Oreca, Nicklas Nielsen took over the car after the repairs, but he was only the third of the four driver to turn a lap. Matthieu Vaxivière did not get such a chance. This was the second time in three years Vaxivière did not get to complete a lap at Daytona. He didn't complete a lap in 2024 either.
The #16 Myers Riley Motorsports Ford had an eventful race even if it did not make it to 6:00 p.m. Saturday. The #16 Ford was black-flagged only 50 minutes into the race for tire operational requirements. About two-and-a-half hours into the race, the #16 Ford was black-flagged again for contact with the #123 Mühlner Motorsport Porsche. Then it had a mechanical issue and its race was over.
Sheena Monk and Romain Grosjean were the only two drivers to get into the car. Felipe Fraga did not get to turn a lap, and neither did Jenson Altzman, who was making his 24 Hours of Daytona debut! The record book will say Altzman raced and this was his first 24 Hours of Daytona, but he must wait until 2027 to actually run a lap in anger.
Nine drivers this year did not get to complete a lap in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and yet will be classified as having participated in this race.
For comparison, last year had five drivers not complete a lap. In 2024, it was nine drivers. I sense a pattern developing.
What about the five from last year?
One of those was Grosjean, and we covered how he did get to run the #16 Ford, but Grosjean is connected to a pair of drivers that did not get to run this year. Grosjean was able to complete an hour and 32 minutes in the car.
Ben Hanley missed out on running a lap last year despite his entry completing over seven hours of last year's race. This year, Hanley was the third driver into the #2 United Autosports Oreca, and he ran nearly 49 minutes in his first stint. Hanley drove over 5:35:41 in this year's race.
After failing to complete a lap in last year's race, Nicki Thiim was in the tightest fight in this year's 24 Hours of Daytona as Thiim had the #44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin fighting for the GTD class victory to the checkered flag. Thiim fell short by 1.367 seconds to the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG, but after not running a lap in 2025, Thiim made up for it in his five hours and nearly 36 minutes driving in 2026.
As for the other two drivers, well, they were not entered in this year's race. Neither Edoardo Mortara nor Daniil Kvyat got to run in last year's race prior to their Lamborghini SC63 losing an engine in the first 34 laps. With no Lamborghini entered this year, neither Mortara nor Kvyat made the trip to Daytona. This means Mortara has still not ran a lap in the 24 Hours of Daytona since 2013 when he won the GT class with Alex Job Racing, and Kvyat still has more 24 Hours of Daytona starts (one) than he has laps run in the 24 Hours of Daytona (zero)!
The oddities of endurance racing! You got to love them!
February Preview
We are going to change this up a bit because we are not going to preview a motorsports event here, but we are going to preview a motorsports tie to a different kind of racing event.
IndyCar veteran Simona de Silvestro will be competing the 2026 Winter Olympics from Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy in bobsleigh, and de Silvestro will be representing the host nation of Italy. De Silvestro will be competing in the monobob and two-person disciplines. She has been working toward competing at the Olympics since November 2023, when she competed in her first event in Lillehammer, Norway.
This was de Silvestro's first season competing in IBSF World Cup events. Her best finish in the monobob was 15th out of 25 competitors at St. Moritz, Switzerland. That same weekend saw her net her best two-woman result when she and Martina Favaretto were 17th out of 24.
In all likelihood, de Silvestro will not be picking up a medal from these Olympics. To be frank, the Germans should clean house.
Laura Nolte won the IBSF World Cups in both monobob and two-woman, though she faced tough competition in the monobob from Australian Breeana Walker. Walker won three of seven events while American Kaillie Humphires won the final event of the season from Altenberg, Germany. In the two-woman competition, Nolte and Humphries were first and second with Nolte winning five events and Humphries winning the other two.
Four years ago in Beijing, Nolte took gold in the two-woman competition with Deborah Levi and fellow Germans Mariama Jamanka and Alexandra Burghardt were silver medalists while Humphries led an American 1-2 in the monobob with Elana Meyers Taylor taking the silver,
On the men's side, the top three teams in each the two-man and four-man IBSF World Cup competitions were Germans with Johannes Lochner taking both championships. At the last Winter Olympics, the Germans swept the podium in the two-man competition but it was Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis taking gold while Lochner and his partner Florian Bauer were silver medalist. Fredrich's team also took gold in the four-man while Lochner's team took silver.
Fredrich also took both golds at the 2018 Pyeongchang games. He was runner-up in the two-man and four-man championships this year to Lochner, but he only won one two-man event while Lochner won the other six. In the four-man, Lochner's team won three events while Friedrich's team won twice. Fellow German Adam Ammour led four-man teams that won the final two events.
Bringing this back to motorsports and de Silvestro, it is incredible just to make an Olympics. Many spend years training to qualify and just get a chance to compete. It is a dream only few get to realize. It will be cool to see someone motorsports fans have watched for over a decade competing in IndyCar, Formula E and Supercars now compete in the Olympics.
When it comes to drivers who have started the Indianapolis 500 and competed in an Olympics, I cannot find anybody, meaning de Silvestro is going to stand in a class of her own. Take that men!
However, if we expand it to IndyCar races across the board, there is one driver I have found that has competed in the Olympics. Frederik McEvoy competed in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and he took the bronze medal in the four-man bobsleigh for Great Britain. Eight months later, McEvoy competed in the Vanderbilt Cup race in Westbury, New York, and he finished sixth driving a Maserati, about 25 minutes behind winner Tazio Nuvolari. Now, McEvoy did get relief from Italian Carlo Felice Trossi, and Trossi drove the final two-thirds of the race as McEvoy only completed 24 laps, but it was McEvoy's only start in the AAA National Championship.
If you get a chance, do read more on McEvoy and his life because there is a lot there.
To end on de Silvestro, I think we all wish her the best, and I hope after this Olympic experience we could see her competing in motorsports again as it has been nearly three years since her last race. She last competed in IndyCar four years ago, which simultaneously feels like yesterday and yet was a lifetime ago. I don't know if we will see her in IndyCar again, I doubt it, but I think she has a place as a professional driver in a GT lineup somewhere in the world, whether that be IMSA, European Le Mans Series, the FIA World Endurance Championship or another competition.
Let's hope next month in Cortina d'Ampezzo is not the final time we see her driving, and the next time we see her it is on asphalt.
There will be a minute until the bobsleigh events begin. Training runs do not start until Thursday February 12. The first medals to be awarded will be the monobob on Monday February 16. The two-man gold will be decided the next day, Tuesday February 17. The two-woman medals will be determined on Saturday February 21 with the four-man being decided on the final day of the Olympics, Sunday February 22.
Other events of note in February:
The Bathurst 12 Hour and the Daytona 500 are on the same weekend, February 14-15!
Rally Sweden is also that same weekend.
The Supercars season and the World Superbike season start on the same weekend in Australia, February 21-22. Supercars is at Sydney Motorsport Park while World Superbike will be at Phillip Island.
The Asian Le Mans Series will conclude. This weekend there is a doubleheader from Dubai. Next week, there is a doubleheader from Yas Marina.
