Ah, the 24 Hours of Daytona. Or the Rolex 24 At Daytona, if you’re slavishly attending to the wishes of sponsors. You’d think, stumping up your hard earned cash for a ticket, that you’d be getting yourself a full slab of 24 hours of racing. Especially with a famous watch company as the title sponsor! And yet! Spectators, commentators, and teams were all astounded when the lead car took the checkered flag at 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 24 seconds. Say what!?
As seen on the telecast, in the dying moments of the race, everything got a bit odd. The timing screen on TV read “2 LAPS TO GO.” The clock on the track had not yet reached the 24-hour mark. Typically, the white flag, indicating the last lap, would be shown when there is less than 1 lap’s worth of time remaining on the clock. This has the drivers hit the 24 hour mark during their last lap.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, the white flag was shown with just under 3 minutes remaining in the race. With the leaders lapping at well under 1:40, that would see the lead cars finish before the 24 hour period had elapsed. And that’s precisely what happened, with the checkered flag flying a lap after the white flag, with Felipe Nasr taking the victory in the No. 7 Porsche. Commentators across the world were flummoxed, fans confused, and even Nasr himself didn’t know what was going on. He kept his foot in it, completing another lap at racing speed just in case, not wanting to give up the win to the hard-charging No. 31 Cadillac coming up behind. Meanwhile, the Porsche drivers in the pits looked confused as to whether they’d even won the thing or not.
The internet raged with speculation and condemnation in the wake of the event. On Monday, IMSA finally released a statement explaining what had occurred.
Due to an officiating error in race control, IMSA inadvertently announced and subsequently displayed the white flag with under three minutes remaining in the race. At the end of the lap, the race-leading No. 7 GTP car then received the checkered flag with 1 minute, 35.277 seconds still remaining, ending the race short of the planned 24 hours by effectively one lap.Based on Article 49 of the 2024 IMSA Sporting Regulations and Standard Supplementary Regulations, should the checkered flag be inadvertently or otherwise displayed before the leading car completes the scheduled number of laps or before the prescribed time has been completed, the race is nevertheless deemed ended when the flag is displayed.
Normally, when it is determined that the time remaining by the time the leader reaches the start/finish line is less than the time it takes to complete a lap, race control calls for the leader to be shown the white flag. After the leader takes the white flag, race control calls for the leader to receive the checkered flag at the completion of the lap.
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New name proposals for next year:
Almost-24
<24
Timex 23.97
Rolex Partial
Daylight Savings https://t.co/kXwAfV1uqX— Corey D Lewis (@CoreyLewis86) January 29, 2024
“Yeah, they really ended the 2024 #Rolex24 after only 23 hours and 58 minutes…” pic.twitter.com/8dJ7j6xNaZ
— Laura Leslie (@LauraLeslieF1) January 29, 2024
They should put some more clocks up next year, just to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Maybe get a clock sponsor to foot the bill?
— Keaton Belliston ♿️ (@spinal_capped) January 29, 2024
Because 23 hours and 58 minutes at Daytona just doesn’t sound right.
Hey where’s my final 2 minutes? I want to see the manager.
Hey auto racing is like the NBA it’s only the final 2 minutes that and you eliminated them.
Maybe they should have just sold two extra minutes of commercials?
A couple thoughts.
First, the final-lap white flag seems to be a purely American idea. No series that I watch outside of the U.S. uses it. I’m not saying someone grabbed the wrong flag, but would it have even been an issue if someone wasn’t trying to figure out when to display the white? The field is full of international racers, I don’t think the absence of a final-lap white would have confused them any.
Second, all the timed races in the junior series I watch are always a specified period, plus a lap. So the clock expires, the leader crosses start/finish, and thus begins the final lap of the race. There’s no reason the 24 can’t adopt this procedure to eliminate any possible confusion.
Third, it’s not so clear to me that an additional lap or two would have retained the finishing order we saw. Nasr was quite obviously pushing a tired car and worn tires quite hard still, as he knew the Cadillac was coming quickly. He had at least one big whoa moment coming into turn one, and were it not for some ill-timed traffic on what proved to be the final lap, the finish could have been much closer. Given another lap (or two), I like the Caddy’s chances.
Even in the US I find it unusual. In all the endurance races I’ve done (nothing fancy, just Lemons and WRL) the white flag signifies that there’s a safety vehicle on track ahead of you. Sometimes with a red cross, but usually not.
I watched an absurd amount of that race, it was awesome even with the weird ending.
If it was the Seiko 24 At Daytona, this never would have happened.
Maybe Rolex needs a co-sponsor more experienced in counting to help them out with that. Maybe Texas Instruments? Or Sesame Street, featuring The Count?
“Two, two laps to go, a-ha!”
Very embarrassing given the sponsor, indeed. Let me do the job! I’d get it right.
What I thought was funny was the international streams had no idea what was going on. They were saying “2 laps to go!” and then it ended and they were extremely confused. Made for a bit of good TV for a moment.
Yeah, a right laugh. I really wanted the extra lap
For those of us stateside, it was just as weird. The implied question mark in the announcers’ voice (“checkered flag?!”) was quite clear.