Round one goes to Ford.
The Ford Mustang GT3 claimed its first IMSA race win with a GTD Pro class win at the 24 Hours of Daytona.
The No. 65 Mustang held off its arch rival, the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R by 1.9 seconds to take the checkered flag.
The Mustang fielded by Ford Multimatic Motorsports was driven across the line by David Olsen, who shared the car with Frederic Vervisch and Christopher Mies for its trip twice around the clock.
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The No. 64 Mustang GT3 and No. 7 Porsche 963 both claimed podium finishes at Daytona.
A second Ford Multimatic Motorsports Mustang finished behind the Corvette to take a step on the podium. NASCAR star Austin Cindric joined sports car aces Sebastian Priaulx and Mike Rockenfeller in the car.
The win comes at a big time for Ford as the $325,000 Mustang GTD is launching this year. The street legal production car is also built in collaboration with Multimatic. It features bodywork inspired by the GT3 car, but comes powered by an 815 hp supercharged 5.2-liter V8 that’s about 300 hp more powerful than the race car’s engine.
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A Corvette is coming home from Daytona with a trophy, however, with the AMA team winning the pro-am GTD class ahead of the Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R and Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.
The overall winner in this year’s race was the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 GTP car of Filipe Nasr, Laurens Vanthoor and Nick Tandy. It was the second win in a row for the No. 7 car and Nasr, who outdueled Tom Blomqvist in the Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 for the win while the No. 6 Penske Porsche finished third.
IMSA will be back in action in Florida on the weekend of Mar 12 – Mar 15 for the notoriously grueling 12 Hours of Sebring.