The entire Andretti Global IndyCar Series roster will participate in the Rolex 24 At Daytona. The same goes for Chip Ganassi Racing’s three IndyCar drivers, and there are plenty of other stars from other racing series and disciplines waiting to descend on Daytona International Raceway for IMSA’s big season opener later this month.
Fans of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship can expect a fun variety of full-time teams and drivers to launch the year, along with an interesting mix of one-time and part-time guest drivers hunting for photos and autographs. Spread over the Roar Before the 24 test (January 16-18) and the main week of activities (January 22-25), the offering of the four IMSA classes should not disappoint.
Andretti Global’s presence at the Rolex 24 is an example of talent distribution, as Kyle Kirkwood (Vasser Sullivan Lexus GTD Pro), Will Power (75 Express Mercedes-AMG GTD) and Marcus Ericsson (Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini GTD) feature on three different teams.
It’s admittedly a strange situation in which the trio is not in IMSA GTP – the top class of the series in which IndyCar’s leading drivers are typically placed – but rather in the entry-level pro-am GT category with Power, making his Rolex 24 debut, and Ericsson, who made DPi/GTP appearances in 2022 and 2024.
For Kirkwood in the fully professional GT class, his relationship with 1996 IndyCar champion Jimmy Vasser and businessman James Sullivan predates his IndyCar career, and while he has attracted interest from IMSA’s prototype teams, his return to the factory Lexus program in 2026 for a seventh season of enduro action is optional.
There is a fourth member of the Andretti Global team in the field in Colton Herta (Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing GTP), who is no longer a regular in the IndyCar program – although he has been tipped to return for the Indianapolis 500 – as his upcoming season will be spent racing in Formula 2 and test driving for the TWG Motorsports-led Cadillac F1 team, which owns Andretti Global and the Cadillac WTR GTP. Within the extensive Andretti/TWG quartet, Herta is the most successful at the Rolex 24 with victories in 2019 (BMW M8 GTE GTLM) and in 2022 (DragonSpeed LMP2).
With Herta included for his eighth start, he and his stablemates have covered GTD, GTD Pro and GTP, leaving only LMP2 without representation. But the pro-am prototype class has some familiar names on its entry list.
Christian Rasmussen, Ed Carpenter Racing’s first IndyCar race winner, is back in LMP2 (AO Racing) with the defending series champions and is looking to add another win in the Rolex 24 class to the one he claimed in 2024 (Era Motorsport). Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel has two IMSA enduro wins to his name at Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta’s Petit Le Mans, and a 2023 Rolex 24 podium, but misses out on a win in the Rolex 24 class and will try again in LMP2 (Inter Europol Competition).
Rasmussen will make his fifth Rolex 24 start in the LMP2 class, and his second with AO Racing. Brandon Badraoui/IMSA
Chip Ganassi Racing is also present in LMP2 with Kyffin Simpson (Tower Motorsport). Add four-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais (Tower Motorsport), recent Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing IndyCar driver Pietro Fittipaldi (Pratt Miller Motorsports) and his younger brother Enzo (Pratt Miller Motorsports), who signed with the HMD Motorsports Indy NXT team, plus former Williams F1 driver Logan Sargeant (Era Motorsport), and LMP2 has no shortage of veterans and emerging talent to follow for 24 hours. racing.
Returning to GTP, Ganassi’s deep ties with Honda are evident with the placement of his defending IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner Alex Palou and his six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon. (main image) with the affiliated IndyCar program (Acura Meyer Shank Racing).
Palou, a four-time IndyCar title winner, has made three Rolex 24 starts with a best finish of seventh, while Dixon is by far the most experienced with 22 starts to date. He is also the most successful among all-stars with wins in 2006 (Riley-Lexus Daytona Prototype), 2015 (Riley-Ford DP Prototype), 2018 (Ford GT GTLM) and 2020 (Cadillac DPi).
They will be joined by open-wheel and stock car ace AJ Allmendinger of the Kaulig Racing NASCAR Cup Series team, who won the 2012 Rolex 24 with MSR and will share the No. 60 Acura with Dixon.
There were hopes that new NASCAR won. Zilisch will have Mercedes F1 reserve driver Frederik Vesti as a teammate in the AXR Cadillac; After Daytona, Vesti won two enduros with the GTP team in 2025.
Last year Zilisch shared a Corvette Z06 GT3 at Daytona with Robert Wickens and Trackhouse teammate Shane van Gisbergen (DXDT Racing), and while he has made the move to GTP and van Gisbergen is taking a year off from the Rolex 24, Wickens is back and has Team Penske IndyCar leader Scott McLaughlin as co-driver.
F1 veteran Kevin Magnussen has switched to factory prototype racing with BMW, returning to the Rolex 24 as part of the German brand’s revised GTP effort (BMW M Team WRT). Magnussen’s former Haas F1 teammate Romain Grosjean, who last competed at Daytona with the off-season Lamborghini GTP program, impressed enough Bill Riley, whose Riley Motorsports campaigned the car for Lamborghini, to bring in Grosjean to lead his new effort (Myers Riley Motorsports Ford Mustang GTD).
While more all-stars could be confirmed, the latest to stand out is PREMA Racing IndyCar driver Callum Ilott (Wright Motorsports Porsche GTD), who competed in his first Rolex 24 in LMP2 last year (Pratt Miller Motorsports) and is scheduled to drive most of the WeatherTech Championship season with Wright.
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