Cadillac makes Daytona Wayne’s world again

Wayne Taylor Racing made it two Daytona 24 Hours triumphs in a row last weekend, and three from four in the Daytona Prototype era. Twelve months ago, its Cadillac led 259 of the 593 laps. This time around WTR drivers Ryan Briscoe, Renger van der Zande, Kamui Kobayashi and Scott Dixon topped the leaderboard for 493 of the record 833 laps. That’s nearly 60% of the race duration compared with just over 40% last year.

What makes that statistic so impressive is that the #10 WTR Cadillac DPi-V.R came back from a series of delays, each time regaining the initiative in double-quick order. It lost time with a drivethrough penalty, a lights issue, a change of brakes, a power-steering glitch and then a one-minute stop/go. It was almost as if it was trying to give the opposition a chance. The reality was that Penske, Mazda and the other Cadillac teams didn’t have much of one of those at the IMSA SportsCar Championship opener. And they knew it.

“They were in a different league,”