There were just 26min left on the clock, the green flag dropped and the four cars on the lead lap raced to the finish. Just 11sec separated them at the chequered flag. This could have been any other Daytona 24 Hours of the past 15 years or so; it probably looked like business as usual to the casual fan unaware of the seismic shifts in sports car racing. Yet it might just have been the most important running of the Florida enduro ever.
This year’s edition of the traditional opener to the North American sports car season on the last weekend of January was the first race for the new breed of LMDh hybrid prototypes. That’s where the significance lies, because these cars will race in the US in the IMSA SportsCar Championship and in the World Endurance Championship, which of course means the Le Mans 24 Hours. LMDh and the Le Mans Hypercar category already in place in the WEC are, combined, propelling endurance racing into a new golden age. The typical Daytona-st yle show the LMDhs put on in the closing stages of the race provided proof of concept.
Concerns that there would be problems across the board for these brand new and highly complex cars, particularly with the off-the-shelf hybrid system in the back
