IMSA Wakes Up at Daytona: Roar Notes for 2026
The Roar Before the Rolex 24 is always the moment where IMSA stops being a schedule on a calendar and becomes a real season again. Three days at Daytona, no trophies, no points, and almost nobody showing their full hand, but it still answers the one question everyone shows up asking: what’s actually real right now? In 2026, that question feels even louder, because this Roar brought a full-strength 60-car field back to the 3.56-mile Daytona road course. That includes 11 GTPs, 13 LMP2s, 15 GTD PRO cars, and 21 GTD entries, which is basically the sportscar equivalent of walking into a gym in January and realizing everyone actually meant it this time.
At the top of the food chain, GTP continues to be the class that sets the tone, and Porsche wasted absolutely no time reminding everyone what the last two years at Daytona have looked like. Felipe Nasr ripped off a 1:36.327 in the opening session and that lap ended up being the benchmark for the entire test, with the privateer JDC-Miller Porsche 963 somehow staying right in the conversation, just 0.004 seconds off that pace. That’s the kind of Roar headline that makes you raise an eyebrow, not because it guarantees anything for the Rolex 24, but because it reinforces the theme: the GTP pack is tight enough that execution is going to matter more than raw speed.
Behind the Porsches, the storylines practically write themselves. BMW’s factory effort is now being run by Team WRT and they immediately looked like a group that understands how to show up prepared, topping Friday afternoon running. Cadillac, as usual, looked like a threat across multiple organizations, and the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing machine reinforced that the V-Series.R is still very much a Daytona weapon. Acura had a bumpier start to the weekend on paper, but this is also the same program rolling in with lineups like Palou in the No. 93 and Dixon in the No. 60. If you’re betting against that kind of talent when the real race begins, you’re braver than I am.
And then there’s the new noise. The Aston Martin Valkyrie showing up for its Rolex 24 debut is the kind of thing that changes the energy in the garage area. It’s a brand-new GTP headline, a brand-new sound in the braking zones, and a totally different type of engineering gamble compared to the established programs. The Roar wasn’t smooth sailing for the No. 23, including an engine change that cost them meaningful track time, and the car ended the test at the back of the GTP order on ultimate lap time. But this weekend was never about winning the Roar. It was about surviving it, learning what breaks, and figuring out what “normal” looks like before you throw 24 hours at it.
LMP2, meanwhile, continues to be the class that quietly turns into a knife fight the second the green flag drops for real. Thirteen entries means traffic is guaranteed, and the driver lineup reads like a motorsport crossover event. Logan Sargeant landing in the Era Motorsport ORECA is a huge “watch this space” move, and the rest of the field is stacked with teams and names that have proven they can win at Daytona if the strategy falls their way. On the stopwatch, the early pace came from TDS Racing, another reminder that the cold, crisp conditions at the start of the weekend were prime time for quick laps.
The GT paddock at the Roar is always where you find the most chaos in the best way, because there are simply too many legitimate winners. This year, the Ford Mustang GT3s were right in the middle of it, with multiple entries showing speed across the sessions. Magnus Racing’s Aston Martin set the quickest GT time of the entire test, and GTD PRO had its own stack of heavy hitters between Corvette Racing, Pfaff’s Lamborghini, Manthey’s Porsche, and a Mercedes roster that included Will Power alongside Maro Engel and Chaz Mostert. That’s the Roar in a nutshell: half the entries look like they could win a sprint race on Saturday, and the other half look like they built their entire weekend around one question, how do we still have brakes at 3 a.m. on Sunday?
Now the real work starts. Because as much as the Roar tells us who showed up sharp, it also sets the table for what matters most at Daytona: reliability, night pace, traffic management, and pit lane discipline. The lap charts were interesting, the headlines were loud, and the field is deep enough that you can already picture four different “favorite” narratives winning. But the Roar isn’t the story. It’s the prologue. And 2026 already looks like one that ends with a fight.