24h DAYTONA

Fernando Alonso triumphs in the 24hs

It was an early end of Daytona 24h. The red flags appeared shortly after the last 2 hours of running and with just over 10 minutes to go before the end of the race, the checkered flag was shaken to end the 2019 edition.
Fernando Alonso, Jordan Taylor, Renger Van Der Zande and Kamui Kobayashi were the big winners of the race, which was marked by heavy rain and long periods of full course yellow. Alonso managed to overtake Felipe Nasr at the Brazilian's runway and added another victory to his extraordinary career.
Filipe Albuquerque, João Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi (Mike Conway failed to take part in the American event) finished in 9th place overall, 7th in the DPi class. The Portuguese were strong candidates for the final victory, but since the free practice they felt very difficult and early in the race Cadillac had problems with the taillights and the team was almost out of the fight for the first post, having been 15 laps leaders.
In LMP2 the victory smiled to Oreca # 18 of the Dragon Speed ​​piloted by Roberto Gonzalez, Pastor Maldonado, Sebastian Saavedra and Ryan Cullen, that were, like the brother car (Oreca # 81 and that finished outside the podium of the class), almost always in the front of the race.
The win in the GTLM went to Augusto Farfus, Connor De Phillippi, Philipp Eng and Colton Herta in BMW # 25. It was one of the best fights of the race, with the Ferrari 488 GTE of James Calado, Davide Rigon, Miguel Molina and Alessandro Pier Guidi always in the race for the victory.
In the GTD, Rolf Ineichen's Lamborghini # 11, Mirko Bortolotti, Christian Engelhart and Rik Breukers, won after the Audi R8 # 29 with Daniel Morad getting off track when he was leading. There was news of car # 11 being under investigation, but for now the victory was awarded to him.
Pedro Lamy and the rest crew, finished in the 22nd position of the class, 44th overall.
It was a race marked by rain, but also for excellent fights during much of the race. It was a shame to have rained more 3 hours from the end, when the drivers felt the driest track and were ready to finish in another great edition of the Daytona 24h. Fábio Mendes, Portugal