The 12 -hour race begins with the light of day and is completed at night and drivers have to face its length as well as traffic, because the four categories of cars that compete have high performance differences and the fastest cars should drive around the slowest.
“It’s a high -risk, high reward circuit, and this makes it special,” Louis Delétraz, Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing, said in an interview. “First of all, you have to survive, which with IMSA circulation is crazy, so it is one thing. It looks more like eight -hour survival, and then in the last four hours [the aim] It reaches the front, then the last hour is war. ”
The teams are trying to optimize the setting for the coolest nights, so cars and drivers have to manage the warmest weather of the day.
“Being fast in the day is nice, but it is not particularly useful, especially after a few rebootes towards the end and things have come back,” Aitken said. “It’s a pretty intense race, we see mistakes over the years – including my car last year – and it’s not a very forgiving part. If you get off the circuit it is very easy to end up on the wall, so it is about car care, which survives through the heat of the day.”
Delétraz won 2024 after taking the lead in just five minutes.
“It was my biggest victory, especially the way it happened. At night the visibility is low, I had 15 minutes of match with Sébastien Bourdais, a myth and it was amazing,” Delétraz said. “I was so stressed out in the car. But I wanted it so bad. I remember shouting at my helmet when I passed it. When we won it was surreal, because it’s such a big race.”
