Roger Penske, the certified mogul – this month, Forbes valued his net worth at $6.5 billion – turns 88 next month. It takes a lot to rattle him. Penske Racing made its debut at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 1966: Since then, he has fielded championship-winning teams in NASCAR, IndyCar, and IMSA sports car racing. Last year, Penske won his 20th Indianapolis 500, the NASCAR Cup championship, and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar championship. And he also won the 2024 IMSA Rolex 24 at Daytona.
But Penske, who typically stays up with his teams for the entirety of these 24-hour races, saw something at the 2025 Rolex 24 that gave him pause. His Porsche-backed, two-car GTP team was comfortably running first and second with 22 minutes to go, and were expected to finish that way.
They didn’t. The leader, Matt Campbell, driving the number 6 Porsche 963, was challenged by the identical number 7, driven by Felipe Nasr, who won the race in 2024. Nasr was just a little bit faster than Campbell, whose car was on a different and ultimately losing tyre strategy than Nasr’s car, giving Nasr the edge. Nasr pulled up to try to pass his teammate, and Penske, watching from atop the pit box, clenched. He could just see the two Porsches take each other out. “I didn’t like that,” Penske said afterward.
But Nasr pulled off a clean pass, moving to the lead. It turned out to be a good thing, because the third-place Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06, driven by Tom Blomqvist, maybe the best closer in the business, was gaining. Five minutes before the chequered flag fell, Blomqvist passed Campbell’s Porsche and set his sights on Nasr, the leader.
When the race ended, Blomqvist was just 1.335 seconds behind Nasr. Blomqvist wasn’t happy, but he was satisfied. “Maybe if there was 10 minutes more, we might, might have got to the back of him, but who knows?” Blomqvist said. “I didn’t think I was going to have anything” for Nasr’s Porsche, “but you never give up, and I think I gave it all I had. To be honest, that was the best we probably could have done today.”
With this win, Brit Nick Tandy has become the first driver to secure victories in the 24-hour races held at Spa-Francorchamps, Le Mans, the Nürburgring, and Daytona – quite the feat.
So Nasr, and co-drivers Nick Tandy and Laurens Vanthoor, are the 2025 Rolex 24 champions, giving Penske back-to-back wins on the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course. “I’m thrilled,” the invariably understated Penske said in victory lane. “It was quite something there at the end.”
Yes, it was something, and handicappers must put Porsche down as the favourite to repeat as IMSA champion. And the Penske Porsches performed well enough to think they really have a chance to win the 93rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which takes the green flag on 14 June. That’s the one victory that has eluded Roger Penske, and truth be told, it’s the biggest reason he teamed with Porsche, which has 19 overall victories there, along with 110 class wins. There’s no question Porsche and Penske will spare no expense to go for that 20th overall Le Mans win.
A couple of other GTP cars deserve mention: The pole-sitting number 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Team RLL and driver Dries Vanthoor – yes, he’s the brother of Laurens Vanthoor, who was on the winning Porsche team – challenged for the lead with 21 minutes to go, but he had to pit after the front bodywork on his BMW came loose, following contact earlier with a Ferrari. After a quick pit stop, the BMW team, which included Formula 1 veteran Kevin Magnussen, had to settle for fourth.
And much earlier, the fast Cadillac V-Series Rs, which combined to lead 99 laps, suffered bad luck. At midnight, the number 31 Whelen car, crew-chiefed by the legendary Gary Nelson and driven by Frederik Vesti, apparently suffered a suspension failure, sending Vesti hard into the front-straight wall in one of the scariest crashes of the race. Vesti was uninjured, and the car was towed to the garage, returning to the race after 78 minutes. It finished ninth.
Even earlier, the number 40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Louis Deletraz spun on cold tyres after a restart, causing another scary multi-car crash. The number 40’s day was over, finishing 55th in the 61-car field. Wayne Taylor’s other Cadillac, the number 10, finished fifth, one lap back.
In the LMP2 class, the only one of the four classes where the winner had a solid lead over second place, the victory went to the number 8 Tower Motorsports, which finished eighth overall. With lead driver Sebastien Bourdais, the Tower team stayed out of trouble, finishing about 45 seconds ahead of the United Autosports team.
It was the first race in an LMP2 car – which all use an Oreca chassis and identical Gibson V8 engines – for IMSA GTP and IndyCar veteran Bourdais. “There was a lot of carnage around us, just a lot of really, really aggressive driving which ended up in contact,” Bourdais said. “I was very surprised, to be honest. I’m not used to that in GTP, and I don’t think I managed to pass without someone just hitting me, plain and simple, which I’m not a big fan of.”
In the GTD Pro class, driver Dennis Olsen kept the number 65 Multimatic Ford Mustang GT3 in front of the number 3 Pratt Miller Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3 which finished second, bookended by the team Mustang number 64, which finished third.
Frederic Vervisch, co-driver of the winning Mustang, said that before the race, Ford CEO Jim Farley, a successful amateur racer himself, met with the team. “He said whatever you do, you have to be in front of the Chevrolet.” Mission accomplished.
In the amateur-focused GTD class, which races the same cars as GTD Pro, a Corvette did take the victory, courtesy of the AWA Racing team, led by driver Matt Bell. He kept the second-place number 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R at bay, winning the class by 1.45 seconds. “Honestly, my brain is fried. I can’t even remember what happened,” Bell said. “All the competitors that we were going toe to toe with today were really hard, really fair.”
In all, it was a pretty typical Rolex 24, run under unusually chilly conditions. Attrition, minimal for the first half of the race, became a factor, with 21 cars listed in the final standings as “not running.” In 61st, and last place, was the lone Lamborghini SC63 GTP car, which only ran 34 laps of the 781-lap race, out with cooling issues.
Next up is the second event in the 11-race IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, on 15 March. Roger Penske expects to attend.
