Winners and losers from the 2025 24 Hours of Daytona

The Porsche Penske Motorsport #7 car successfully defended its 24 Hours of Daytona victory in the 2025 running of the race, claiming a 20th win at the event for Porsche in dominant fashion as it led over half of the laps in the event.

This race was full of stories. How about a portable sauna? An ex-Formula 1 star taking to his new surroundings like a duck to water? A trooper? A flipping of the bird? And an angry dinosaur?

The Race has picked out some of the winners and losers of the event focusing on the stories behind the results. With 61 cars to follow, we couldn't cover every story, but hopefully we've picked out some of the best in the immediate aftermath.

Winners

Porsche and Nick Tandy

Daytona, Le Mans, Nurburgring and Spa. Nick Tandy has now won all four of those 24-hour races outright after adding this weekend's race to his CV.

And he was a massive part of it after Porsche slimmed down to three drivers per car for this year and moved Tandy into last year's winning car alongside Felipe Nasr and Laurens Vanthoor.

Nasr displayed why this writer believes he is the best driver in the top class of the IMSA SportsCar Championship once again, driving sensibly but aggressively when needed, fighting mainly the #24 BMW, and refusing to fold under the 'where did he come from?!' pressure applied by Tom Blowmqvist in the #60 Acura in the closing stages, too.

Vanthoor was a lovely addition, too, and this team demonstrated how important it is to have an absolutely elite line-up in this series these days.

The 963 was absolutely flawless and there were very few errors.

Once Porsche made some tyre pressure and set-up changes after a relatively disappointing first stint, the two team cars led almost the whole night stint and 66.2% of the race laps.

A late charge from Blomqvist stopped a 1-2, but Nasr was able to bolt while Matt Campbell in the #6 did just enough to slow the Acura down.

Loser

Lamborghini

A star-studded line-up including two ex-F1 drivers and a year of car development should have given Lamborghini it's best chance yet of a breakthrough IMSA result, but unfortunately it all fell apart early.

Romain Grosjean, Daniil Kvyat and Formula E frontrunner Edoardo Mortara all failed to even get in the car after Mirko Bortolotti qualified the SC63, as his presence in the race was short-lived.

The car wasn't quite ready for last year's IMSA campaign and needed a lot of development via the Iron Lynx team running it through 2024, but the programme has been taken in-house at the last minute this year, meaning Daytona was always likely to be a 'drinking from the fire hose' scenario.

And so it transpired. The car retired after just 34 laps with a water pressure issue which caused overheating, robbing its star names of a lap in anger.

Lamborghini's GT cars all hit trouble as well, with only one of them left running, 10th in GTD.

Winner

Kevin Magnussen

KMag hit the ground running on his return to IMSA and his first time driving the new LMDh hybrid hypercars in anger.

In his first stint he recovered from going a lap down to move all the way up to third, and in his final stint in the daylight on Sunday morning he battled up into second - then gave that position up when he could have easily taken himself and the #6 car out of the race had he remained firm in battle.

He was fast, acutely aware of when to fight and when to cede position on a track with 61 cars, and earned general admiration from his team and team-mates - which all means this was about as good as it could've been for Magnussen. Especially after only one test in the car prior to the event.

The biggest compliment that he can be paid is he looked interchangeable for any of the drivers in this line-up.

Loser

BMW

It's so hard to put BMW in the losers category given it started the year with a car that set the fastest time in every sector and the two fastest laps overall while fighting for a victory in this length of event for the first time in this rules cycle.

But ultimately, even if it showed unbelievable pace, the result was a disappointment. The #24 car that boasted Magnussen among its line-up had a dislodged front diffuser because of contact - although BMW isn't yet sure where that happened - which forced Dries Vanthoor to pit late on, having been in the lead fight during the final few hours. It still finished fourth.

Its #25 car was hit by an LMP2 entry in what was a much more difficult race than the #24 had faced, although it only finished four laps down thanks to the pace of Robin Frijns, Rene Rast, Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann.

Another highlight which makes the losers tag unfair was the pace of its new evolution of its M4 GT3 car, which led and looked extremely strong in both GT classes. Often it takes a bedding in period for a new car to be on the pace in such a competitive class, but it was immediately at the front.

On that note, it's worth a shout out to the #57 Winward Racing car in the GTD class, which went from seven laps down to lead the class, had a drivethrough and got penalties for a tyre not being controlled by a pit member and pitting in a closed pit for an emergency service, yet still came back to finish fourth in class.

Winner

Tower Motorsports

It felt like nobody wanted to win the LMP2 class, such were the string of issues each leader faced, and It would be easy to pick out Sebastien Bourdais as the class hero. But the Am driver John Farano might deserve the plaudits at the winning #8 Tower Motorsports squad.

He hilariously took credit for single-handedly assembling the ace line-up - with Sebastian Alvarez and Job Van Uitert also on board - but more importantly, his back had locked up before his final stint and he still needed to complete his minimum drive time.

"Like a trooper", as Bourdais put it, Farano carried on for the sake of his team and the victory as Tower Motorsports got its reward with a first victory at this race.

Loser

Cadillac

Two of the three Cadillac entries were out of the race during the night.

The #40 Wayne Taylor Racing car, driven by Kamui Kobayashi at the time, appeared to loose the rear end at Turn 1 on a restart.

Prior to that he had both wowed the crowds with his aggressive and entertaining overtakes and pace and caused raucous laughter in the press room - after explaining his decisions to visit a local outdoors store this week to buy a portable sauna, and a trip to a laundromat to do his own washing while many of the other drivers were doing things like watching an NBA game. "I smell very good," he declared.

Mercedes F1 reserve Frederik Vesti had a crash in the #30 Whelen car, most likely caused by a puncture or a suspension failure as the car speared into the wall on the famous Daytona banking. He did get back out with just over four hours to go, but 51 laps down.

The remaining #10 WTR car had gone a lap down overnight and then Filipe Albuquerque punted the #25 BMW at Turn 1 on a restart, earning a drivethrough and ensuring that car stayed a lap down for a long period.

Fifth was actually a strong result, scoring good points, although this won't have been the start Cadillac wanted after swapping Chip Ganassi Racing for WTR running two cars this year.

Winners

Ford and Chevrolet

Two of America's biggest brands delivered in America's biggest sportscar race as Ford Multimatic (Mustang GT3) and AWA (Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R) came out victorious in GTD Pro and GTD respectively.

Both classes produced epic, door-to-door racing throughout but especially when the heat was turned up in the final laps.

Christopher Mies, Dennis Olsen and Frédéric Vervisch gave this iteration of Mustang its first victory by 1.9s, while Matt Bell, Orey Fidani, Lars Kern and Marvin Kirchhöfer handed Chevrolet its 21st victory in this event by 1.5s. After 24 Hours!

Loser

AO Racing

Last year's GTD Pro champion AO Racing - also a perennial frontrunner in the LMP2 class - is arguably IMSA's most popular team thanks to its dinosaur liveries and sell-out merchandise stands.

And it looked like both cars had a good chance at victory until, well, they really didn't.

The LMP2 car was leading late on in the hands of IndyCar driver Christian Rasmussen but would not restart after pitting late on from the lead. It finished sixth.

The #77 911 GT3 R hit the front and then had issues, hit the front and had issues. Repeat.

A fuel software issue, being hit on two separate occasions by other cars, and a couple of penalties meant the fan favourite finished only eighth in class.

Loser

Augusto Farfus

Ex-DTM frontrunner turned GT ace Farfus was at the centre of controversy when he - despite not being on the leaders' lap - held up a rival of his team-mate. It resulted in Tommy Milner getting damage which he had to pit to repair. Milner was very angry and flipped Farfus the bird on his way past. Farfus was given a drivethrough.

"That's not what IMSA is about, sportscar racing is about," said #4 Corvette driver Milner. "First and foremost, the driver should be embarrassed, the team should be embarrassed, BMW should be embarrassed with that kind of racing."

Farfus said: "I was aware that it was hard racing. The situation that led to the collision between the Corvette and Connor De Phillippi behind me was very unfortunate - but I had nothing to do with it directly. I stayed on my inside line."