Today’s Rolex 24 at Daytona came down to a 10 minute sprint for glory in a brilliant debut for the new TUDOR United SportsCar Championship.

The Action Express Racing No.5 Chevrolet Corvette Daytona Prototype of Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi and Sebastien Bourdais took the victory with Barbosa holding off Wayne Taylor Racing’s Max Angelli after the yellow flag bunched the field with 10 minutes remaining.

“I didn’t want to see it. I had quite a good gap and cushion so I could manage traffic,” Barbosa said.

“I was getting quite worried initially because I kept hitting traffic at the wrong moments. When the yellow came, I was struggling with the car.

“The gears weren’t as smooth as I would have liked it. They were sticking a little bit. But what a race. Action Express first and third; Corvette, one-two-three. These Action Express guys are the best. And my teammates…what a phenomenal job. We had a little hiccup during the night but we still had plenty of time to come back and that’s what we did. We kept fighting to the end.”

Porsche triumphed in the GT LM class with the new factory team dominating the race. While the No.912 sister fell out of the race with an engine problem, the Patrick Pilet, Richard Lietz and Nick Tandy No.911 was able to hold on for victory despite a charging Joey Hand in the BMW coming strong at the finish.

The win marked a brilliant day for CORE autosport. Not only is the Rock Hill, SC-based team the operating partner for Porsche in the GTLM class, their PC class team of Colin Braun, Mark Wilkins, James Gue and team owner Jon Bennett were also victorious.

The GTD Daytona class finished under wild circumstances with the Level 5 Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi first across the line but was later penalized for avoidable contact with the Flying Lizard Audi of Markus Winklehock – this was despite the fact that cars didn’t actually touch as they went through the kink on the Daytona infield.