The fifth hour of the 2017 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona opened with a familiar feel as the previous hours, Cadillac in the lead of the race, with the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Konica Minolta car leading the way with Max Angelelli on driving duty.
Risi Competizione #62 Ferrari and the #991 TRG Porsche come together at the bus stop, forcing the Ferrari to use the escape road and in doing so not really losing out. Following the heavy impact in the previous hour it was announced that the #73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche had been forced to retire (fourth retirement of the race) due to the damage caused by the impact.
This hour also brought some fantastic work between classes as at moments there was some three-wide action across three different classes.
There was some drama toward the end of the hour as the #31 Whelen Engineering Racing car tried to pass the #88 Starworks Motorsports car on the outside of the banking, whilst there was a gap at the start of the manoeuvre it closed very quickly and the #88 ended up in the wall, heavily damaged and forced to limp back to the pit lane. The resulting accident led to a full course yellow and effectively the end of the action for the hour.
A round of pitstops lead by the GT class saw a shake up of the leaders with the #31 leading the Cadillac 1-2-3 with #5 Mustang Sampling Racing and #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Konica Minolta in second and third places respectively. With the previous PC class leader #88 damaged and out of the running, the #38 Performance Tech Motorsports car leads the class ahead of BAR1 Motorsports #20 and #26.
In the GT’s the lead remains in the hands of the #66 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing car, but the #3 Corvette Racing car has leapfrogged in to second place ahead of the #67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing. In GTD the #93 Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian car is leading the way ahead of Scuderia Corsa’s #63 and the Turner Motorsport #96.
Top 3 by class after 5 hour
P
31 Whelen Engineering Racing – Dane Cameron, Eric Curran, Michael Conway, Seb Morris
5 Mustang Sampling Racing – Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi, Filipe Albuquerque
10 Wayne Taylor Racing Konica Minolta – Ricky Taylor, Jordan Taylor ,Max Angelelli, Jeff Gordon
PC
38 Performance Tech Motorsports James French, Patricio OWard, Kyle Masson, Nicholas Boulle
20 BAR1 Motorsports – Don Yount, Buddy Rice, Mark Kvamme, Chapman Ducote,Gustavo Yacaman
26 BAR1 Motorsports – Tom Papadopoulos, Johnny Mowlem, Adam Merzon, Trent Hindman, David Cheng
GTLM
66 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing – Dirk Mueller, Joey Hand, Sebastien Bourdais
3 Corvette Racing – Antonio Garcia, Jan Magnussen, Mike Rockenfeller
67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing – Ryan Briscoe, Richard Westbrook, Scott Dixon
GTD
93Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian – Andy Lally, Katherine Legge, Mark Wilkins, Graham Rahal
63 Scuderia Corsa – Christina Nielsen, Alessandro Balzan, Matteo Cressoni, Sam Bird
96 Turner Motorsport – Justin Marks, Jens Klingmann, Maxime Martin, Jesse Krohn
