After becoming world champion in Formula 1 (twice), winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans and almost winning the 500 Miles of Indianapolis, Fernando Alonso added another trophy to his collection: the 24 Hours of Daytona.
In a race marked by heavy rain, the victory of Fernando Alonso and his team, Wayne Taylor Racing, came ahead of schedule. When there were about 1 hour and 57 minutes to complete the 24 hours of the race, the race direction was forced to interrupt the race due to the heavy rain that was being felt.
At the time of the interruption of the race, Fernando Alonso was leading the race driving a Cadillac DPi, having just overtaken fellow ex-Formula 1 driver Felipe Nasr shortly before.
That said, after more than an hour of waiting for the decision of the race direction came confirmation: the race would not be resumed and therefore, Fernando Alonso, Renger van der Zande, Kamui Kobayashi and Jordan Taylor won this year's endurance event.
Portuguese with modest performance
With this victory, Fernando Alonso's team succeeded that of Portuguese João Barbosa and Filipe Albuquerque, who had won last year. In this edition of the competition, the national duo found themselves “haunted” with technical problems. Still in qualifying, problems with the brakes on the Cadillac DPi led the team to start from 46th and last place on the grid.
Subscribe to our Youtube channel
During the race, problems with the lighting system forced Action Express Racing's Cadillac DPi, with which João Barbosa and Filipe Albuquerque were racing, to some pit stops that relegated them to ninth position, 20 laps from the winner. Pedro Lamy, the other Portuguese in the competition, took 22nd place, driving a Ferrari in the GTD category.
Fernando AlonsoIt's unfortunate that we didn't complete the race distance, but we were ahead at night, in the day, with the track dry or wet, so I think we deserved it in a way.
With this victory, Fernando Alonso joined Phil Hill (1964) and Mario Andretti (1972) in the restricted group of Formula 1 world champions who won the 24 Hours of Daytona. Now, the Spaniard's goal must be to conquer the 500 Miles of Indianapolis and what they call the "Triple Crown of Motorsport" : victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Monaco Grand Prix and the North American race, something that, until today, only Briton Graham Hill has managed to do.