Just ahead of another of Daytona International Speedway's largest events in Welcome to Rockville, the facility has announced that tickets have gone on sale for the 2025 running of the Rolex 24, with festivities taking place from January 23rd to 26th. Tickets went on sale on Wednesday, available at the speedway's official website.
The Rolex 24, also commonly known as the 24 Hours of Daytona, is among the most famed endurance races in the world, and it serves as the season opener for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship circuit. Teams compete across multiple divisions of racing, with individual winners being awarded in each one. Each race team consists of several drivers who take shifts racing on Daytona's road course configuration, where a series of additional turns are opened up inside the usual oval.
The 2025 Rolex 24 will feature four classes of car: GTP, LMP2, GTD PRO, and GTD. Each will have a field of cars racing simultaneously on the 3.56-mile road course starting on January 25th and ending on January 26th.
The first iteration of the event was run in 1962, consisting of just three hours of racing. Dan Gurney won that event by himself without any co-drivers. The race expanded to 2000 kilometers in 1964, and then to its modern 24-hour runtime in 1966. It was shortened to six hours for 1972, was called off entirely in 1974 due to an energy crisis, and has run for 24 hours every year since 1975.
Winners of the Rolex 24 have included some of the most legendary names in motorsports history: Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Jeff Gordon, Al Unser Jr., Fernando Alonso, and Kyle Larson to name a few. It was also depicted in the 2019 sports drama Ford v Ferrari, in which Ken Miles (Christian Bale) won the 1966 event for Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to earn a place in the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year.
The 2024 overall winners were Porsche Penske Motorsport, who captured the first win for a German automaker since 1995, and the first for owner Roger Penske since 1969. The winning driver team consisted of Americans Dane Cameron and Josef Newgarden, Australian Matt Campbell, and Brazilian Felipe Nasr. They won driving a Porsche 963, snapping a three-year winning streak for Acura.
"I feel honored to just have been here," Newgarden said after last year's victory. "I feel like I've got family that I'm just really proud of. I felt like that at the end of the race. I could cry thinking about it."
The Daytona scene in Ford v Ferrari, shot at Auto Club Speedway in California.
