Chaz Mostert and Ryan Briscoe have claimed victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona in GTLM and DPi classes respectively.
Antipodeans Briscoe and Scott Dixon combined with Kamui Kobayashi and Renger van der Zande to claim outright honours.
The Cadillac squad bested Mazda Team Joest by more than a minute after 833 laps, with the JDC-Miller MotorSports #5 Cadillac third, the only other car on the lead lap.
The race was highlighted by a three-way scrap for the lead in GTLM which saw Mostert’s #24 BMW M8 GTE tussle with the #911 and #912 Porsches.
Mostert and his BMW Team RLL squad, which included John Edwards, Jesse Krohn, and Augusto Farfus, claimed the lead in the final hour courtesy of a strong move by Krohn on the Porsche of Nick Tandy.
Krohn ran down Tandy, who subsequently ran wide at Turn 3 and opened the door for the BMW.
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The Porsche driver then lost further time and fell behind Bamber in the sister car as he grappled with old rubber heading into the final round of stops.
Positions then remained static to the chequered flag, BMW Team RLL taking the soils ahead of the Porsche pair.
A strong early stint from Kobayashi put the Konica Minolta Cadillac out front before the Japanese driver then brought it home with a triple stint.
The race was not without incident, however, with Briscoe serving a 60-second penalty after not stopping at a red light at pit exit, and then touring the lane with a power steering issue.
It saw the car drop out of the lead before a solid recovery drive put the squad back out front with four hours to run.
Holding on to the finish, it marked the second consecutive win in the event for the squad, and Briscoe’s first outright success.
Lamborghini prevailed in GTD, Paul Miller Racing winning by a touch under 22 seconds in a Lamborghini Huracan GT3.
The AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus of Shane van Gisbergen was 12th in class, 31st overall, a total of 37 laps down on the class winners.
DragonSpeed USA claimed LMP2 honours by two laps over the PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca, with Era Motorsport third in class a further two laps down.
The IMSA SportsCar Championship heads to Sebring on March 18-21 for Round 2, the 12 Hours of Sebring, a weekend it shares with the World Endurance Championship.
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