Rolex 24 at Daytona roars this weekend in Florida

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Tires, check.

Brakes, check.

Space heaters, check. Coffee, check. Equipment has been unloaded and inventories completed.

With the Rolex 24 looming, a wide array of sports-car teams on Thursday morning began searching every nook and cranny for that extra ounce of horsepower and another layer for their cloaks of reliability.

For some, all of the wintertime wrenching, along with the three-day test earlier this month and the final tuneups leading to the weekend, will go up in smoke or crash into a heap before even one lap of the clock in this 24-hour grinder.

For others, however, once Sunday afternoon rolls around they will have forgotten all of the hard work – OK, maybe most of the hard work – when they see their cars make it to the 24-hour mark and that long-awaited checkered flag.

But only a handful will enjoy a full payoff when they hop aboard the podium in Daytona International Speedway’s elusive victory lane. Among auto racing’s traditional postrace celebrations, the Rolex 24’s champagne showers are harder earned than most.

“It ranks quite high. Daytona is one of those venues and speedways that you would like to win eventually in your career.”

That comes from international racing superstar Fernando Alonso, a two-time Formula One champion and, last year in his second effort, part of a winning Rolex 24 effort. Alonso had won races in the sport’s marquee arenas on other continents – Monza, Monaca, Silverstone and others – yet felt the need to win a Rolex (literally, by the way, since the winning drivers get a new watch in victory lane).

“To add Daytona into that list is quite special,” Alonso said last year. He’s passing on this weekend’s race, having redirected his moonlighting efforts to the recently completed Dakar Rally, a 12-day romp through the sands of Saudi Arabia that makes the Rolex 24 look like a dash to the supermarket.

Plenty of expensive, purpose-built automobiles began turning laps Thursday on Daytona’s 3.56-mile course that incorporates the famed trioval and its infield kinks and horseshoe turns. You’ll read and hear many initials and some sponsor names. Here are the basics:

❚ IMSA is the International Motor Sports Association and an arm of NASCAR. IMSA runs the show this week.

❚ WeatherTech, the car-mat company, sponsors IMSA’s highest series, which will race the Rolex 24. Within the WeatherTech Series are four classes of cars: Daytona Prototype international (DPi); Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2); GT Le Mans (GTLM) and GT Daytona (GTD).

The cars in DPi and LMP2 are purpose-built and unlike anything you’ll see on the street, while the GTLMs and GTDs are closer to “stock cars” than what you see here during NASCAR weekends.

❚ Just as NASCAR has its Xfinity Series, IMSA has a “minor league” circuit – the Michelin Pilot Challenge, which opens its 2020 season Friday with the four-hour BMW Endurance Challenge.

❚ Within the Michelin circuit there are two classes of cars – Grand Sport (GS) and Street Tuner (ST), and like many of the higher-end GTs of the WeatherTech Series, most look like they just came off the dealer lot and were outfitted and painted for the track.

Many who don’t care one bit about all of that will still make their way to the Speedway this weekend, because the Rolex 24 has become many different things to many thousands of people who enjoy a spectacle. The rest of you, if inclined, can get a look-see on TV since NBC will televise the bulk of those 24 hours on its platforms.