How to Watch the 2021 Rolex 24 at Daytona

How to Watch the 2021 Rolex 24 at Daytona

The American racing season begins this weekend with its traditional opener, the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The 59th running will boast a new five-class structure and 49 entries, guaranteeing competitive battles and chaos in equal measure. Here’s how you can watch.

NBC will again handle the television broadcast, which will be split between their main broadcast network, their soon-to-depart cable affiliate NBC Sports Network, and their online streaming platform. The first hour, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. est., will be broadcast on NBC itself, while NBCSN will handle the majority of the race, carrying segments from 4:30 to 8 p.m., 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., and 6 a.m to 2 p.m. Their live streaming platform will cover the 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. and 3 a.m to 6 a.m hours, while the last two hours of the race will go back to the NBC network.

IMSA

All IMSA racing is also available as part of NBC’s TrackPass, a standalone streaming option that costs $4.99/month. This will feature the entire race in one stream, while during past Rolex races the cable options have required streamers with a login to switch between streams during the different broadcast windows.

Internationally, IMSA’s distribution rights vary by country. In those without an official deal, the race can be streamed on the organizer’s official site. Those with a deal can find more specific information on that same website. Additionally, IMSA Radio will again provide its traditional coverage in all regions, available online and streaming consistently in one place for the entire race.

The headline of the race itself will again be the battle for the overall win, once again expected to be a fight between Cadillac, Acura, and Mazda. All three manufacturers have significantly changed their stable in the past year, however. Mazda is down to just one car, while Acura’s relationship with Penske has been replaced by two separate deals with Meyer Shank Racing and three-time Rolex 24 winners Wayne Taylor Racing. Cadillac has responded to the loss of WTR by bringing Chip Ganassi Racing, formerly a dominant force at this race in the DP era, back into the fold. Cadillac also gets a boost from class stalwarts Action Express Racing, who have entered a strong extra car centered around Jimmie Johnson.

This will also be the first-ever IMSA race for LMP3, a new class for pro-am lineups that promises a more affordable alternative to LMP2. In addition, it will be the final 24 Hours of Daytona for GTLM, the outgoing all-pro GT class that will be replaced next season by a modified version of the current GTD category.

In addition to the broadcast coverage, we will be hosting another live blog in the same format as last year, providing constant updates and a refresher on what you may be missing if you choose not to spend 24 hours watching a race without a break.

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Rolex 24 viewer’s guide: Five things to watch at Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The two-time defending overall champion car owner of the Rolex 24 at Daytona has a succinct description of how preparations have been going for a record-tying third consecutive victory.

“Oh, chaos,” Wayne Taylor said. “Just chaos. Complete chaos.”

This is a positive kind of chaos, though, for teams that enjoy challenges and fans who like a jumbling of the traditional power structure.

This year’s Rolex 24 has featured a frenetic run-up to a prestigious season opener that will have a formidable lineup top to bottom across the largest field in the sports car endurance classic since 2018.

In the DPi division, Wayne Taylor Racing has switched from running the No. 10 Cadillac (which has won three of the past four Rolex 24s) to Acura, which also has added Meyer Shank Racing (which is moving up from the GTD division) to replace the former two-car effort from Team Penske.

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Chip Ganassi Racing, an eight-time Rolex 24 winner, has returned to the sports car fray with the No. 01 Cadillac.

And those are only the team changes. The driver swaps require a much longer scorecard:

–Taylor essentially has hired the team that beat his squad for the 2020 series championship, bringing his older son, Ricky, back into the fold along with former Penske drivers Helio Castroneves and Alexander Rossi and pairing them with new full-season driver

–Meyer Shank Racing has hired two other former Penske drivers, Dane Cameron (full time) and Juan Pablo Montoya (for the Rolex 24).

—Having been “sacked” by WTR, Renger van der Zande has joined Ganassi, which also has added Formula One veteran Kevin Magnussen (son of former GT champion Jan Magnussen).

That’s just in DPi. There also is some major shuffling happening in GTLM (which has absorbed the blow of Porsche Motorsport’s departure) and GTD (whose Rolex 24 field will include past GTLM champions Earl Bamber, Laurens Vanthoor and Oliver Gavin, as well as IndyCar star Colton Herta).

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All of this is occurring against the backdrop of an extremely truncated offseason after a pandemic-delayed 2020 season ended a month later than usual with the Twelve Hours of Sebring, the second-biggest race of the year.

With barely time to recover during the holiday season, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Series had a brief testing session before falling into a new rhythm leading into the Rolex 24.

Instead of having a few weeks after the Roar Before The Rolex 24 test session to digest data, Rolex 24 teams have spent the better part of two weeks with nonstop running and tinkering while wedging in a 100-minute qualifying race for good measure.

Taylor’s mechanics have taken to sleeping in the trailer at their team’s shop while working on shocks until 3 a.m.

“I would put my team against anybody in terms of their vision, their focus, their attention to detail and just the attitude,” Taylor said last week. “But the guys literally have been working 24/7, and now we’re really, really tired. This is the hardest race to prepare for.”

This year, it will be among the deepest for an event that many consider a 24-hour sprint race around Daytona International Speedway’s 12-turn, 3.56-mile road course.

Beyond the usual collection of the world’s greatest sports car aces, there are three Daytona 500 winners, five Indy 500 winners and two Formula One winners. Both the reigning NTT IndyCar Series champion (six-time titlist Scott Dixon, who also won his fourth Rolex 24 last year) and NASCAR Cup Series champion (Chase Elliott in his IMSA debut) are here.

“It’s so competitive, and it’s never been more competitive than this year,” GTD driver Katherine Legge, who has returned for her first race since breaking her legs in a crash last year, told NBC Sports. “It’s so stacked driver lineup-wise, it’s ridiculous. You’ve got the best drivers from all over the world and so many cars. You go into it thinking we just have to survive. We just have to be on the lead lap until the last four hours. Then we can really go after it. The reality is you’ve been after it since the word go.”

Said Taylor: “These days are not like the old days of the 24 Hour. It’s like qualifying for 24 hours now.”

And it’ll seem very crowded on the high banks of the World Center of Racing. After a record-low 38 entries last year, car count has increased by 11 with the LMP2 class doubling and a new LMP3 class.

“The race is going to be really tight, really difficult,” Cameron said. “I think it’s going to have a little different feel this year. It’s the most cars we’ve had in a long time here. A new category, a lot of new teams, cars, drivers in this event. I think it’s going to take more of a survival feel than normal. Last year especially with so few cars, the pace was crazy with so few cars. Flat out all day, big stretches of green flag. This will be pretty far from that. This will be more about surviving.”

In addition to a very deep and very different field for 2021, here are four more things to watch during the 59th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, which will begin Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET on NBC:

—Crossover country: The list of NASCAR and IndyCar drivers migrating south to Daytona Beach this winter is long.

The focus mostly has been on Elliott, who is continuing his offseason quest of diversifying his resume, and seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, who is using his first Rolex 24 to prepare for his transition to the high-downforce world of IndyCar while also hoping to check a crown jewel off his bucket list.

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But there are many other familiar names with divergent interests in the race.

With the exhibition Clash and a Feb. 28 Cup race upcoming on the same Daytona layout, Austin Dillon is using the race primarily as a route to road course improvement. Oliver Askew (LMP3) and Zach Veach (GTD) both are trying to jump-start their careers after losing IndyCar rides. And Alexander Rossi and Simon Pagenaud just want to become first-time winners of the race that unofficially begins the major-league racing season.

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“Winning the Rolex 24 would go right there next to my Baby Borg Indy 500 trophy,” Rossi said. “It’s one of those three or four flagship premier events in the world. It’s something a lot of drivers cherish and are looking for and very few ultimately are fortunate enough to win it, so that’s my No. 1 target in Daytona.”

—The final four: Winning time will begin shortly before noon Sunday. That’s when the race will enter its 21st hour, and a mad dash typically ensues.

With the Rolex 24 starting shortly after 3:30 p.m. ET, there will be a longer finishing kick in daylight hours than some previous years when the race was ending around the time it’ll hit high gear in 2021.

“When we wake up Sunday, we still got a long way to go,” Montoya said. “It’ll be harder on the body and mentally and make the day feel longer.”

Said Rossi: “Sunrise is a special time because you’re kind of through, in a lot of people’s minds, one of the hardest parts in a way, but with the race time this year, the sunrise doesn’t really mean a whole lot. There’s still a good eight hours of racing to go, which is a lot of time. It’s both relieving to see it and depressing because it’ll be, ‘Oh, we’re almost done,’ and then you look at the clock, and it’s, ‘Oh, no we’re not.’ It’s just an added challenge. It’s what Daytona is all about.

“I think the first 20 hours of the race, you’re trying to protect the car, stay on the lead lap and then the last four hours is when you unleash everything you’ve got available to you.”

–No room to move: While the LMP3 class has helped juice the car count, it also has increased the level of amateurism in the field with many more “gentlemen drivers” on track.

Some professional drivers haven’t shied from publicly noting the lack of skill, and IMSA officials privately have been as concerned by the rise in amateurs in LMP2, too.

It’s made things especially tricky for some of the most talented GT drivers, whose cars technically are slower than the prototypes.

ENTRY LIST: 49 cars scheduled to take the green flag

“It’s a bit more of a challenge,” said Laurens Vanthoor, who will be racing in GTD after winning the GTLM championship in 2019 with Porsche. “With all due respect, as we’ve seen in LMP2, there are amateur drivers in LMP3. You come in situations where the car is quicker than the GT cars, but the driver inside is less experienced and an amateur vs. a pro, which then causes a bit of an issue because we have to try to overtake a quicker car.

“We saw that last year a couple of times in GLTM vs. LMP2. This will get worse for sure here and there and cause a little bit of drama, but we have more cars, teams and drivers on the grid, so I see that as a positive for everybody, and the challenge is the same in the end for everybody. You just have to try to be smartest with handling it.”

Regardless of how adept the pros are, it’s a virtual given that cautions will spike over last year (when there were only six).

—Feuds and power struggle: IMSA’s Balance of Performance policy to keep teams on equal footing always causes grumbling at the Roar and Rolex as teams lobby to get help or to hamstring the competition.

But the sniping seemed to reach next-level contentiousness among DPi drivers after the Motul 100 qualifying race when Cadillac winners Pipo Derani and Felipe Nasr immediately volunteered that they thought their Acura and Mazda rivals were sandbagging (and then doubled down when asked to elaborate in a postrace news conference). Mazda drivers sloughed off the criticism but also took some friendly shots in return.

The lap times from practice this week have indicated IMSA made a prudent decision to keep the rules static for the Rolex 24, which has been won the past four seasons by a Cadillac.

But the kindling has been laid for more trash-talking, particularly if there’s a race incident (such as the collision between Helio Castroneves and Harry Tincknell last year).

Packed Rolex 24 at Daytona grid gives race “a survival feel”

The Meyer Shank Racing Acura driver, who won the title with Juan Pablo Montoya and Penske in 2019, believes the increased number of cars for this year and the addition of the LMP3 class to the grid will result in more yellow-flag safety car periods and will change the dynamic of the race.

“It is going to have a different feel this year,” said Cameron who has switched to the Shank team after the end of Penske’s involvement in the Acura Daytona Prototype international programme.

“It’s the most cars we’ve had here for a long time, a new category, new teams, new cars and new drivers to this event.

“Last year especially, with so few cars, the pace was crazy all day, with big stretches of green flag. I think this [year’s race] is going to be pretty far from that — it is going to have more of a survival feel to it.”

The 49 cars on the grid for the Rolex-sponsored 24 Hours at Daytona represents an increase of 11 cars on the 38 that started the race last season. It is the biggest grid at Daytona since 2018 when 50 cars started.

LMP3, which is making its debut in the main IMSA series this weekend, provides seven of the cars in the race.

The Rolex 24 was interrupted by only six safety cars over the course of the 24 hours last year and the 2018 event by just four. The 2019 edition, which was wet for much of its duration, included 16 safety car and a 90-minute red-flag period before the race was brought to a premature finish two hours early.

Montoya, who will race the Shank Acrua ARX-05 in the four IMSA enduros this year alongside full-season drivers Cameron and Olivier Pla, suggested that a cautious approach in traffic will be required this weekend.

“The 24 Hours is pretty unique in the way you spend so much time in traffic,” he said. “This year they have added LMP3, so it is going to be even crazier in the way you catch them - just being patient and just being smart will make a huge difference.”

AJ Allmendinger is the fourth driver in the Shank Acura this weekend.

The Daytona 24 Hours begins at 3:40pm local time in Florida. The grid has been set by a 100-minute qualifying race, which took place last weekend at the conclusion of the official pre-event Roar test.

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