Nick Tandy is first driver in history to claim unique record at 2025 Daytona 24 Hours

Nick Tandy had carried a very special target around with him for a while. Yet as the opening exchanges of the Daytona 24 Hours in January unfolded, it didn’t appear that he was going to hit his mark this time. “We looked horrendous!” reckoned the Porsche stalwart. Yet just under a day later, he was celebrating his first outright victory in the early season Florida enduro. And with it a unique motor sport record.

The Brit became the first driver to win all four of the major 24-hour enduros around the globe. That’s win them outright. He added victory in the opening round of this year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship to his triumphs at Le Mans in 2015, the Nürburgring in 2018 and Spa in 2020, all notched up at the wheel of Porsche machinery.

“Tandy struggled to get his words out as his achievement sunk in”

There have been drivers who have taken class victories in all four, and Tandy was one of them – including GT honours in the 2014 Daytona 24 Hours in his second year as a Porsche factory driver. And there are a handful who have achieved three ‘overalls’ as Americans like to say, Hans Stuck, Timo Bernhard, Earl Bamber and Mike Rockenfeller among them, but no one had completed the set. The significance wasn’t lost on Tandy.

“Oh my god, it’s incredible, isn’t it?” he told Motor Sport in the wake of his victory aboard the factory Penske Porsche 963 LMDh shared with Felipe Nasr and Laurens Vanthoor. “A farmer from England, the first person to win all four!” he added in reference to the family business.

Tandy struggled to get the words out as the significance of his achievement sunk in post-race. “To be the first person to ever do something is… I mean, it’s quite unbelievable, really,” he said. “First of all, you’ve got to be proud that you’ve been put in a position to be able to compete for that in these sort of races, and then be in a car that can go for the win.”

Thoughts of a full-house of victories at each of the twice-around-the-clock enduros go back to his 2020 success at Spa driving a Rowe Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R. “It never really dawned on me about these sort of records and stuff like this until we won at Spa and somebody said, ‘Well, you’ve got wins [overall or in class] in all the four majors now,’” he recounted of a conversation that he’d forgotten was with Motor Sport. “And then you look into it, and you see there’s other people, legendary names, on these lists who have won various things but never overall in all four.”

Tandy had to put aside his aspirations to add the missing outright Daytona triumph to his own list for a couple of years. When Porsche opted to end its factory involvement in the GT Le Mans class of the IMSA series for 2021, he jumped ship to Chevrolet to race its Corvette C8.R, first in IMSA and then the World Endurance Championship. When he made his decision, Porsche had yet to commit to a return to the top of the sports car tree with what became the 963. When that car started racing in 2023, Tandy was back at the German manufacturer racing in IMSA’s GTP class and in a position to go for overall honours at Daytona for the first time.

“Then the inevitable final-hour safety car period arrived”

Last year, Porsche won what is officially known as the Rolex 24 at Daytona in deference to its long-time sponsor, but Tandy was in the ‘wrong’ car. This time he was in the ‘right’ one. There wasn’t that much to choose between the two Porsche Penske Motorsport entries around the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway on the last full weekend of January, but a strategic decision by the PPM squad played out in favour of the No7 car co-driven by Tandy.

Porsche knew it had a problem at the end. It came in the form of the Rahal-run BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh driven by Dries Vanthoor, full-season team-mate Philipp Eng, and Kevin Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello. It was the fastest car in the place and sat between the two 963s in second position when the inevitable – or should that be predictable? – final-hour safety car period arrived. Porsche was all too aware that the BMW had the edge and opted to split its strategies for what ended up as a 38-minute dash to the flag.

The Porsche out front, the No6 car with Matt Campbell at the wheel, received only two new tyres — just on the right-hand side – when the field peeled into the pits under the yellow flags, No7 in third driven by Brazilian Nasr, Tandy’s full-season IMSA team-mate, getting four fresh Michelins. The logic was simple, explained Porsche Penske Motorsport boss Jonathan Diuguid afterwards.

“We wanted to make sure that PPM had one car in front of the BMW,” he explained. “That was our plan based on what we saw at the start of the race: we didn’t have the pace to run with the BMW, but we thought that if we were out front we could control the race.”

PPM was playing the percentages. And it left the car at the front of the queue with an onerous task. Campbell, who shared No6 with Mathieu Jaminet and Kevin Estre, didn’t have the rubber under him to hold on. He lost out to Nasr after a dozen or so laps and then could do nothing about the Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 LMDh driven by Tom Blomqvist, who also had the benefit of a full set of new Michelins. Campbell just reckoned he “wasn’t able to fight like I wanted” after crossing the line in third.

And of BMW? The younger of the Vanthoor brothers could only trail home fourth, a lap in arrears after nudging the back of Campbell into Turn 1 at the final restart. The nose broke in the impact; the pitstop for a replacement and the slow lap that preceded it explained the one-lap deficit.

“Just before the 23-hour mark the BMW started porpoising”

But this clash wasn’t the reason why BMW didn’t score what would have been only its second overall triumph at Daytona, nearly 40 years after its 1976 victory with a 3.0 CSL shared by Brian Redman, John Fitzpatrick and Peter Gregg did the business. The issue with the front body section had already reared its head.

Just before the 23-hour mark, the best of the BMWs started porpoising violently. So manic was the car’s behaviour that Vanthoor believed that a damper had failed and was still nursing the resulting headache a couple of hours after the chequered flag.

In fact, a nose mounting had failed or perhaps come loose, and BMW wasn’t entirely sure why. A clash with a GT car perhaps? Vanthoor had nudged a Ferrari in the penultimate hour. Or maybe the issue went all the way back to BMW’s star driver nerfing the wall when he overcooked it and arrived in his stall at an acute angle at his second pitstop. It might never be known.

But what was clear – at least to the man behind the wheel, if not to Porsche at the time – was that BMW was no longer a contender for victory. “I couldn’t fight with the car like that,” said Vanthoor. “I couldn’t outbrake anyone, because if I’d tried, I would have locked up and crashed.” That was evident in the touch with Campbell when the green flags waved the final time.

Yet Vanthoor was confident before the BMW’s handling went awry that victory was there for the taking in what was billed as the 63rd Daytona 24 Hours, though was nothing of the sort. The track and IMSA count four editions of the early season Florida enduro run to a shorter distance in its formative years and the six-hour 1972 edition during the fuel crisis. So make that 58. He was most definitely backing himself: “I would have put myself favourite.”

Tandy wouldn’t have argued with that. “In the conditions at the end they were fast,” he reckoned. “Even if they’d been down at the back of the queue [after the final safety car], they would have been favourites.”

This was an opportunity missed for BMW, a marque that had only notched up a couple of fortuitous IMSA victories since the M Hybrid began racing in 2023, one year before it came on stream in the WEC. It dominated the early stages from the pole that Vanthoor claimed, a first for the car. By the time of his botched pitstop, he held a lead of 25sec. Porsche trailed way back, hence Tandy’s early pessimism. “I looked at Laurens, and said, ‘We’ve got no chance!’”

“I couldn’t outbrake anyone. If I tried I would have locked up”

The Porsche was a match for BMW during the night, but when the sun came up it was Munich and not Stuttgart in the ascendant. “We knew we had a car to fight for the win,” was the assessment of BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos. Yet Daytona did prove that the upward trajectory shown by the M Hybrid last year, particularly in the WEC with the WRT team, has continued, helped by BMW playing one of the ‘evo joker’ development upgrades allowed over the lifespan of an LMDh. It’s pertinent to the front brakes. On the basis of Daytona, BMW clearly has to be looking to go one better in the WEC than its second-place finish at Fuji last September. “Wins are the target for sure,” said Roos.

But the win went west in Daytona. It was Porsche drivers Tandy, Nasr and Vanthoor who collected the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph timepieces awarded to the winners of the race. Tandy now has two because class winners get them as well. You can only wear one at time, so what’s going to happen to the second one?

His dad, Joe Sr, doesn’t wear a watch. “Of course not, he’s a farmer!” said Tandy. Son Felix, now eight and already competing in bambino karts might be the beneficiary, he reckoned: “It’ll probably go into the Formula 4 test fund in a few years.”