Major success to start the season: Daniel Juncadella (E), Jules Gounon (AND), Maro Engel (D) and Cooper MacNeill (USA) took victory at the legendary 24 Hours of Daytona. The trio from the DTM and ADAC GT Masters won the GTD Pro class for GT3 cars at the wheel of a Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

After 729 laps of the 5.79-kilometre racetrack, Gounon crossed the finish line in first place and could hardly express his joy: “Fantastic, we’ve done it. Winning here is simply remarkable. We could hardly have had a better start to the long season we have ahead of us. I couldn’t have dreamed all this,” said the man who won four races in the 2022 ADAC GT Masters. The Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo was run in Daytona by Swabian team Proton Competition, who also claimed the class victory in the LMP2 class in a photo finish.

Mirko Bortolotti from Italy finished fourth as the new Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 made its race debut. Belgian Laurens Vanthoor came home fifth in the GTD Pro class in Porsche’s latest GT3 model, the 911 GT3 R.

Former DTM driver Tom Blomqvist (GB), at the wheel of an Acura ARX-06, celebrated overall victory in Daytona, where the new GTP class made its first appearance in the IMSA. Blomqvist was sharing the prototype made by Honda’s US subsidiary with Colin Braun (USA), Helio Castroneves (BR) and Simon Pagenaud (F). Germany’s Marco Wittmann enjoyed a successful debut for the brand-new BMW M Hybrid V8, alongside his DTM colleague Philipp Eng (A) and Augusto Farfus (BR). The sister car, with DTM champion Sheldon van der Linde (ZA) also competed the first endurance test for the prototype, finishing ninth in the class.

2022 ADAC GT Masters champion Raffaele Marciello was forced to retire early on his LMP2 debut. However, the Italian can already look forward to the next challenge: he starts alongside Engel in the popular Mamba this weekend, as they line up in the 12-hour race at Mount Panorama in Bathurst.