Herta unsure he’d get chance to make Daytona 24H LMP2 winning pass

Herta was teamed with IndyCar rival and former Indy Lights teammate Pato O’Ward, new IndyCar teammate Devlin DeFrancesco and Eric Lux in the #81 DragonSpeed Oreca-Gibson.

Although this was his fourth time in the IMSA SportsCar Championship classic – and he won on his debut with BMW – it was his first IMSA outing in a sports prototype.

The combined efforts of the quartet – and canny strategy under cautions – brought the team from three laps down back onto the lead lap and they led the class by just under half a minute until with just under two hours to go, the caution flags flew for a spun and stalled GTD car. That erased DragonSpeed’s advantage and allowed Tower Motorsports onto Herta’s tail for the restart.

Gradually Herta inched away but with 50 minutes to go, another full course yellow flew for a broken-down LMP3 car, and by not giving its car new tires in the subsequent pitstop sequence, the Tower team was able to jump Louis Deletraz ahead of Herta.

At the final restart, Herta appeared to be wrestling with the car just to keep PR1 Mathiasen and Racing Team Nederland entries behind him, and briefly Deletraz had the lead out to 1.2s, but Herta whittled it down and with 10 minutes to go he was in the Tower car’s slipstream.

“I knew that I would have a little bit of a grip advantage,” said Herta, “but it is quite difficult to get a run and pass in these cars, especially with the Bus Stop [now known as the Le Mans Chicane]. You get a lot of aero wash.

“It took a few tries and it didn't happen until I got a little help from traffic. It was always kind of give and get with the traffic.

#81 DragonSpeed USA Oreca LMP2 07: Patricio O'Ward, Eric Lux, Colton Herta, Devlin Defrancesco

Photo by: Brett Farmer / Motorsport Images

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