DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Starting from the rear of the Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) field at the 64th Rolex 24 At Daytona turned out to be a minor setback for Paul Miller Racing.
Neil Verhagen’s front-row qualifying effort in the No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO for the classic IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship endurance race was disallowed after the car was found to have camber in excess of the permitted limit.
But despite starting 15th and last, Verhagen and his co-drivers Connor De Phillippi, Max Hesse, and Dan Harper prevailed to win by 2.223 seconds over the No. 75 Mercedes-AMG GT3 fielded by 75 Express and driven by Kenny Habul, Maro Engel, Australian Supercars champion Chaz Mostert, and IndyCar star Will Power.
It was class victory No. 2 for Paul Miller Racing at the Rolex 24, the other coming in GTD in 2020 with a Lamborghini Huracán GT3. It was also PMR’s second consecutive GTD PRO win in WeatherTech Championship competition, as Hesse, Harper and De Phillippi shared PMR’s then-No. 48 BMW to cap off the 2025 season at Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Starting from the back of a race is always a daunting prospect, but the PMR drivers weren’t too fazed because they knew they would have 24 hours to work with.
“If we were going to get disqualified from one, this would be the best one to get it done,” said Verhagen, who was victorious at Daytona in his third Rolex 24 start. “Obviously, we were a bit discouraged about losing the points for qualifying, but I don’t think we felt we were starting off on the wrong note or something like that.
“We just knew that we needed to work like a team and that’s what we did. We pulled off a flawless race.”
De Phillippi also earned his second Rolex 24 class win (2019 in GT Le Mans in a BMW M8 GTE), while Hesse and Harper took home the coveted Rolex Daytona timepiece awarded as a trophy for the first time.
The No. 1 car moved into contention early in the fifth hour and was leading in GTD PRO just prior to halfway when the race went into a six and a half-hour holding pattern under caution due to heavy fog. The sequence of pit stops during the marathon safety car period pretty much put the PMR BMW back where it started, but it took Verhagen and Hesse just two hours to move back to the front of the field when racing resumed shortly before the 18-hour mark.
They encountered one final obstacle when the PMR pit lost radio contact with Harper in the final hour of the race.
“The last hour, my heartbeat was going crazy – emotions were flowing,” Verhagen related. “Dan didn’t have any communication with us, but he handled it perfectly. There isn’t anyone I would trust more in that situation. We had our guy in and he delivered.”
“The guys did a great job on all the pit stops and we got the track position, which to be honest was really key for us this weekend,” Harper added. “We knew it was crucial to get that track position for the final stint, and the boys pulled it off.”
The PMR group’s closest pursuers were not able to mount a serious challenge in the two-plus hours of green-flag racing that concluded the race. The No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsport Corvette Z06 GT3.R led nearly a third of the race (188 of 662 laps) but fell to seventh when Nico Varrone was pushed off-track by James Calado in the No. 033 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO just after the final restart.
That put Manthey’s No. 911 ‘Grello’ Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) out front for an hour, but a difficult final stint for DTM ace Thomas Preining left the car running fifth at the flag, just behind the rallying No. 4 Corvette.
Their collective woes allowed Mercedes-AMG to claim the final podium places, with the No. 75 car second and Scott Noble, Jason Hart, Maxime Martin, and Luca Stolz teaming for a third-place finish in the first GTD PRO race for defending IMSA GTD class champion Winward Racing’s new No. 48 entry.
“We did everything we could – there was nothing else we could do,” said Habul, who owns and operates the runner-up 75 Express team in addition to being part of the driver lineup. “It feels great to be on the podium after not finishing here the last five years, and we’ll just have to try to get one better.”
