Rene Rast maintained his lead throughout hour 14 of the Rolex 24 At Daytona which was held mostly under caution as the torrential rain gradually eased.
When the race finally went green with 20 minutes remaining the #90 Spirit of Daytona car rocketed away from the second place #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Jordan Taylor to open up a 19 second lead on two laps of racing.
In GTLM, Harry Tincknell overtook Ford team-mate Billy Johnson for the lead at the restart, but Johnson regained the position before the end of the lap.
However, after only two laps, the tenth caution of race occurred when the #50 WhetherTech Mercedes of Cooper MacNeil was involved in an incident.
The American, who was debuting the new Mercedes AMG GT, spun coming out of turn 2 and clipped the wall, damaging the front left and slowly made his way back to the pits.
Again, Rast took advantage of the clear track to rapidly build a gap ahead of a struggling Taylor who was up to 8 seconds a lap slower than the leader.
Christian Fittipaldi in the #5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac circulated in third but a lap down of the leaders.
For most of the hour Ford led GTLM, but on the second restart #911 Porsche of Dirk Werner took the lead as Porsche’s superiority in the wet allowed the German marque to end the hour with a 1-2.
In PC Kyle Masson continued the Performance Tech Motorsports domination of the event and had a 3 lap gap between him and the first of the BAR1 Motorsports cars of Chapman Ducote who in turn was four laps ahead of team-mate Trent Hindman in third.
In GTD it was the #57 Stevenson Motorsport Audi that ended the hour in the lead of the category ahead of the only trouble-free Mercedes, the #33 Riley Motorsports entry of Mario Farnbacher and the brand-new Michael Shank Racing #93 Acura rounding out the podium.
Lexus’s first outing continues after the #15 car rejoined after repairs but 46 laps down on the class leader.
Top 3 after 14 Hours
P
90 VisitFlorida Racing – Marc Goossens, Renger van der Zande, Rene Rast
10 Wayne Taylor Racing Konica Minolta – Ricky Taylor, Jordan Taylor, Max Angelelli, Jeff Gordon
5 Mustang Sampling Racing – Joao Barbosa, Filipe Albuquerque, Christian Fittipaldi
PC
38 Performance Tech Motorsports – James French, Patricio O’Ward, 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
911 Porsche GT Team – Patrick Pilet, Dirk Werner, Fredoric Makowiecki
912 Porsche GT Team – Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, Richard Lietz
68 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing – Billy Johnson, Stefan Mucke, Olivier Pla
GTD
57 Stevenson Motorsport – Robin Liddell, Lawson Aschenbach, Andrew Davis, Matt Bell
33 Riley Motorsports – Team AMG – Ben Keating, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Mario Farnbacher, Adam Christodoulou
93 Michael Shank Racing – Mark Wilkins, Andy Lally, Katherine Legge, Graham Rahal
