The Action Express Racing Team Wins A Manic Daytona 24 Hours
Famed wife-scarer João Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi, Sebastian Bourdais, Burt Frisselle, and the rest of the Action Express team took the overall win at the Rolex 24 at Daytona just now. It's João's second overall win, after his first in 2010. Congrats to the whole team!
The race overall was incredibly manic, with a huge injury-causing crash, a yellow caution coming just before the end, leading to a sprint to the finish, and controversial penalties called right until the checkered flag. One of which even appears to have handed the Flying Lizard team, piloting an Audi R8 LMS, the GTD class win, which is a bit crap.
Full race results below:
Photo credit: Getty Images
UPDATE: There's been a lot of rage about that last penalty on the No. 555 Level 5 Motorsport Ferrari against the Flying Lizard Audi R8 LMS. The officials ruled that the non-collision between the two was "avoidable contact," even though video replay appears to show no contact whatsoever. The Flying Lizard team responded on Twitter:
Haters gonna hate.
UPDATE 2: They've reversed their decisions and Level 5 gets the win, thus removing the irony of Level 5 being deterred by a late, unexpected, and unfair penalty Here's the statement:
A full post-race review of the incident on the last lap of the 52nd Rolex 24 At Daytona was completed by IMSA Supervisory Officials. The decision has been made to reverse the decision by the race director, rescind the penalty against the No. 555 Level 5 Motorsports Ferrari 458 Italia team, and reinstate drivers Scott Tucker, Bill Sweedler, Townsend Bell, Jeff Segal and Alessandro Pier Giuidi as the GT Daytona class winners. We regret the confusion following the race, and appreciate the patience by our fans, drivers, teams and the media so we could properly review and subsequently report this decision.