While the Chevrolet Corvette GTLM entries could not taste the champagne in victory lane today, the Daytona Prototype version of the Corvette finally achieved Rolex 24 at Daytona success for the first time.

Introduced in 2012,  GM Daytona Prototype victory today by Action Express Racing was the first for car. Wayne Taylor Racing took them to championship success last season but today’s victory was the first for the Rolex 24.

Action Express Racing last won here at Daytona in 2010 with Porsche power. Today was the first Rolex 24 victory for Sebastien Bourdais while Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi took their second round-the-clock Daytona success.

Fittpaldi hadn’t won here since 2004.

The winning trio was the strongest entry in the 67-car field that began the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship. The No. 5 Corvette DP led 18 times for 272 laps – including the final 34 – and Barbosa posted the fastest lap of the race at 1:39.180 (129.220 mph).

“I just hope it doesn’t take me another 10 years to win again,” Fittipaldi said.

“No, it’s been awesome. Action, Joao, myself, Chevy, we had a great run last year, actually things Joao did when both of us were together in the car, and I think it made maybe the 9 car stronger and it made the 5 car a lot stronger.

“I have to admit that the way things were going last year, I thought that we had a chance at the championship, although we only started driving together on race 4. But it didn’t go our way, and this race definitely went our way.

“I think preparation for this race didn’t start two, three months ago, it started one year ago when we left this place, and we knew exactly what were our strong points and what were our failures or maybe like weak points and where we had to improve to make the whole organization a lot stronger.

“I’m very happy for Action. I’m really happy for Chevy. Joao drove like really, really perfectly the last couple of laps, Sebastien, also, Joao did very quick with us, and I guess the three of us, it worked pretty okay. We’ll see what can happen in Sebring, but I’m definitely looking forward to the next race, also.”