MOTORSPORT: Aussie Briscoe's Daytona glory

Australian Ryan Briscoe has scored a class win in a Ford GT at the 24 Hours of Daytona in Florida, just hours after the Blue Oval's success in the Monte Carlo Rally.

The 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 that US-based Sydneysider Briscoe shared with New Zealander Scott Dixon and Briton Richard Westbrook to take the honours in the GT Le Mans class at the Rolex 24 gave Chip Ganassi his 200th victory as a team owner.

"Yeah baby!!!," excited former IndyCar driver - and one-time Formula 1 test driver for Toyota - Briscoe tweeted.

It was a third Daytona 24 triumph for Dixon (and his 41st with Ganassi). "It's always fantastic to win here," Dixon said.

"I don't think we had one single problem, which is something for Ford and the entire program to be proud of."

Another Ganassi Ford GT - shared by Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, American Joey Hand and German Dirk Muller - finished second in that GTLM class, ahead of the arch-rival Corvette C7.Rs.

Cadillacs were one-two outright and in the Daytona prototype class for the second year in a row.

This time they were cars run by Action Express Racing - the first of them driven by Portuguese pair Filipe Albuquerque and Joao Barbosa along with Brazilian veteran Christian Fittipaldi - rather than Wayne Taylor Racing, whose entries were among many prototypes to have multiple punctures in their Continental tyres.

Continental said some teams were too aggressive with the tyres and had not followed the parameters it had set for them, while Taylor said he had parked his car that won last year mid-race out of concern for the safety of its drivers.

Despite some rain and overheating issues, and aided by few caution periods, the first two Cadillacs - as well as the third-placed Oreca LMP2 car, in which the drivers included Le Mans winners Romain Dumas and Loic Duval - completed a record 808 laps and 2,876.48 miles (4,629.25km). That easily surpassed the 762 laps and 2,760.96 miles mark that had stood since 1982.

The Ford GTs led 771 of the GTLM record 781 laps they completed, with a Porsche 911 RSR in front for seven laps and a Corvette for three.

The first of Chip Ganassi's double century of wins as a team owner across many forms of racing was the 1994 Gold Coast Indy, with Michael Andretti driving a Ford Cosworth-powered Reynard.

Another iconic team owner, Roger Penske, returned to sports car racing at Daytona with a pair of Honda Acura ARX-05 prototypes which were on the pace but out of contention for victory by three-quarter distance and wound up ninth and 10th.

One, with three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves at the wheel, lost time after it was hit by the Brazilian's countryman Felipe Nasr in the Cadillac that ultimately finished second. Penske's other car had an alternator issue.

Neither of the two Mazda RT24 prototypes reworked by Germany's Joest Racing since the middle of last year nor the two Nissan prototypes in the field finished.

The LMP2 Ligier in which dual F1 world champion Fernando Alonso made his sports car debut was contending for a podium until major brake issues cost it a lot of time and it ended up 90 laps behind.

"You arrive at the first corner around 300-310kmh and then you hit the brakes and there are no brakes … you are a little bit scared," Alonso said.

"At night you don't clearly see the tyre wall or where this escape road is, so that was even more scary … but luckily in this track you go directly to turn six, so you have an interesting shortcut there.

"I have a positive outcome, even with all the issues. I really did enjoy it a lot.

"I love driving and when you drive eight or nine hours in one race it's much better than one. So it's a very good feeling driving 24 hours."

From 50-50 before the weekend, Alonso said he was now 60-40 on doing the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, which would be with race favourite Toyota.

Europe's Grasser Racing Team won the GT Daytona class with a Lamborghini Huracan - the first 24-Hour victory anywhere for the Italian make.

A pair of new BMW M8s were no match for the Fords and Corvettes in GTLM, causing frictions between the Bavarian manufacturer and the International Motor Sports Association over the balance-of-performance assessment of them.

And it was the first Daytona 24 since 1962 at which Porsche was not represented on the podium in any class.