'Made me sick' - why Bourdais' car was stripped of Daytona class win

"I sold it", said Sebastian Bourdais when presented with the likelihood he would have to give back the Rolex watch he'd won mere days earlier because his team has been stripped of class victory in the 24 Hours of Daytona - a decision Bourdais reckons is nonsensical.

Disqualifications - or in this case, being put to the back of the LMP2 class, 12th - are much more uncommon in the modern era of motorsport, but they still happen, as was the case with the #8 Tower Motorsports car which after a day of racing, was deemed to have excessive wear to the floor blank underneath the car and on Wednesday it was demoted in the order.

For Bourdais' team-mates, Sebastián Álvarez, John Farano and Job van Uitert, it was their first Daytona win, and for Forano, the end goal of a long-term project which he has presumably thrown millions of dollars at over years of competition.

The new LMP2 winner is the #22 United Autosports entry of James Allen, Dan Goldburg, Paul di Resta and Rasmus Lindh, taking the championship lead after the first and only 24-hour event on the IMSA SportsCar Championship calendar. It's the first win for Goldburg, di Resta and Lindh at Daytona.

With so much to dissect, including why the penalty was controversial and Bourdais' anger for it, we've taken a deeper dive into the story.

What was the reason for the penalty?

"During extended post-race technical inspection, the #8 entry was found to have exceeded the maximum allowable wear to the regulated area of the skid block on the underside of the car," IMSA confirmed.

"According to FIA technical regulation 3.5.6 regarding skid blocks, the maximum allowable wear is 5mm.

"When informed of the penalty, the #8 team filed a protest which was denied by IMSA."

That penalty moved the car to 12th and last in class but, because IMSA still awards points that low down, the Tower car still scored 209 points, albeit 176 points fewer than it would have done for the win.

The rules are the same for everyone, a phrase that I'm sure will be levelled at the team, but it is worth noting that not every team goes through scrutineering at the end of the race, so it's possible other cars got away with breaching this rule.

That doesn't change the fact that it breached the rule, though. It's easy to see why there's so much passion around this because it took 24 hours of brutal, wheel-banging racing to get to this victory and to have it taken away for such a minor infraction must be crushing.

If there was a mechanical reason for this issue, which we'll get to in a second, then IMSA didn't see fit to give the team the benefit of the doubt.

What did Bourdais have to say?

Bourdais issued a statement following the announcement of the penalty, saying the fact it made the Tower team look like "cheaters" made him feel "sick".

Bourdais pointed to a rear damper being broken which caused the excessive wear of the plank, although this information was not enough to get the penalty overturned, as Tower's failed protest shows.

"In recent memory, IMSA always used common sense when enforcing rules that were breached by technical failure," added Bourdais. "Unfortunately, not today."

Tower also later released a statement, saying while it "respects the regulatory process", it was "extremely disheartened by this decision".

"We firmly believe that this outcome does not reflect any wrongdoing or competitive advantage on our part," it added.

It remains to be seen if we'll see a handover of trophies and the famous watches that are given to each winning driver by the event sponsor, Rolex. United Autosport might be one short after Bourdais' claim he has sold his, though that seems more likely a joke.

For Bourdais, there probably isn't a massive difference between two and three Daytona wins. But for his team-mates, this is a tough blow to take.

An 'amateur' driver is required to race in each LMP2 line-up and Farano (pictured right, in 2023, alongside Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden) has backed and funded many drivers to be his team-mates over a lengthy spell in endurance racing, with the team even winning the IMSA LMP2 category in 2022.

But Daytona has been at the top of the hitlist for some time.

"This is truly special," Farano had said after the win. "Worked really hard for it. The whole team really worked hard for it. We've come close a couple of times, we’ve been on the podium twice before this.

"Just a lot of effort and a lot of pain to go through to get to this spot, but we truly worked hard, and this is truly a dream come true for sure."

It's a consistent penalty

Of course, the enormous consequences of this penalty have led to a lot of strong opinions about it. But the penalty is at least in keeping with other post-race inspection findings.

Last year, the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 was moved to the back of the GTP class at Indianapolis after a non-homologated wiring loom was found. And in 2023, that same car was stripped of the race win and moved to the back of the class at Watkins Glen for - you're not going to believe this - excessive plank wear. And that was only a six-hour race.

The Race did observe the suggestion that it was unfair that the #8 Tower car got this penalty and lost a win, whereas the #60 Meyer Shank Acura car was not disqualified from overall victory at Daytona in 2023 for being found guilty of manipulating tyre pressure data.

But the big difference in that case is that the issue was not found in the post-event technical checks, and took months to be investigated and penalised after the results had been declared final.

And while it wasn't stripped of the race win it got much harsher penalties, including a loss of 200 points - greater than if the car had been moved to the back, and a penalty that cost it the championship at the end of the year in hindsight - a $50,000 fine, loss of Michelin Endurance Cup points, loss of race prize money, probation for team owner Mike Shank and an indefinite suspension for team engineer Ryan McCarthy.

These findings and penalties were not completed and announced until March, almost two months after the event took place, which obviously makes going back and changing the results much more complicated and difficult than when they are still unofficial, as was the case with the Tower Motorsports car this week.

More criticism from Bourdais

After years racing top-level Cadillac machinery, Bourdais dropped down to the LMP2 class for this year's event. He briefly raced in the class in 2022 but not in IMSA, making this his first appearance in the class here and for two years at Daytona. And it's safe to say he wasn't thrilled by the driving standards, despite the quality on paper and no fewer than four ex-Formula 1 drivers racing in this class alone.

Describing being caught up in an early incident, Bourdais said it was "like Days of Thunder", the NASCAR movie.

"When it all cleared in front of me and the car still had four wheels on it and the steering wheel was straight, I was like, 'Man, this is just a miracle!'"

He later added: "There was a lot of carnage around us, just a lot of really, really aggressive driving which ended up in contact.

"I was very surprised, to be honest. I'm not used to that in GTP, and I don't think I have managed to pass someone without someone just hitting me, plain and simple, which I'm not a big fan of that.

"Really every time I was super happy that the car was still straight and we kept going forward because it was a pretty solid hit.

"Yeah, it was very strange."

He also said he observed one LMP2 car "torpedo" Alex Palou in a top-class Acura.

It’s fair to say Bourdais didn't enjoy the LMP2 car last weekend, which had been an in-joke between the four-driver line-up heading into the race.

"The car was really difficult to drive," he added. "Daytona is historically a very tough track because it's low grip. It's quite worn out in the infield and it makes tyre deg quite high, you're running low downforce.

"The LMP2 has been a little sabotaged to not go too fast as well, so it doesn't make it the easiest handling car to get around, and the smallest difference in mechanical grip makes a big laptime difference.

"I think we're still kind of trying to find the best set-up, but for sure it was the best car we had from the November test, the Roar [the test leading up to Daytona] and the 24 weekend all together.

"We're still probably missing about a half a second, but it's the closest we had been, and at night when it got cold, we definitely picked up enough grip that we were in contention.

"It looked like it was going to be really difficult during the day, and finally it kind of came to us mostly because of indents and unforced errors from others."

Bourdais is due to race with Tower for the rest of the IMSA season alongside competing in the top class of the World Endurance Championship with the Jota Cadillac squad. It seems clear which one he will enjoy most, especially after this experience.

He has also been heavily linked to an IndyCar return at the Indianapolis 500 with Chip Ganassi and with NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson playing a co-ownership role, although that is still just rumour at this point.

"You'll have to ask Chip," Bourdais said with a massive grin.