Cadillac Wins 2018 Daytona 24 Hours

Cadillac has won a record-breaking Daytona 24 Hours courtesy of Filipe Albuquerque, Joao Barbosa, and Christian Fittipaldi.

In a race that had just two safety car periods, the #5 Cadillac DPi controlled proceedings throughout, taking the lead after just half an hour.

They were followed home by the #31 Cadillac of Felipe Nasr, Eric Curran, Mike Conway, and Stuart Middleton, while Oreca rounded out the overall podium with the #54 CORE Autosport car of Jonathan Bennett, Colin Braun, Romain Dumas, and Loic Duval.

The front trio of cars amassed a total of 2,876.48 miles (808 laps), shattering the previous race distance of 2,760.96 miles set in 1982.

In GTLM, Ford dominated as the Ryan Briscoe #67 entry heading the sister car home for a Chip Ganassi 1-2 in class.

“It’s always fantastic to win here,” said Scott Dixon, who shared the car with Briscoe and Richard Westabrook.

“I don’t think we had one single problem, which is something for Ford and the entire program to be proud of.”

The duo headed the #4 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R in third which rounded out the class podium.

The GTD Class win was only decided in the final minutes of the race, as the #33 Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Jeroen Bleekemolen closed on the back of the class leading #11 Lamborghini Huracan driven by Mirko Bortolotti with half hour left to run.

Bleekemolen’s charge ended as he made a final stop with less than 15-minutes remaining, dropping to third place in class behind the Acura NSX GT3 piloted by Alvaro Parente.