#93 Acura ARX-06 in Rolex 24 Pole Position
Renger van der Zande qualified the #93 Phillips 66 Acura ARX-06 with the second-fastest time of the qualifying session, the car was promoted to pole position for the 64th annual Rolex 24 At Daytona following post-qualifying technical inspection. With this change, the grid now sees three of the five manufacturers racing in GTP in the top three positions. #43 Inter Europol, #3 Corvette Racing and Heart of Racing Vantage on top of their classes.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. Three different manufacturers in top three qualifying
Acura will start from pole
Renger van der Zande—a two-time Rolex 24 race winner—qualified the #93 Phillips 66 Acura ARX-06 on the front row as he and his teammates Nick Yelloly, four-time and reigning Honda-powered NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion Alex Palou, and Honda Formula Dream Project driver Kaku Ohta try to get Acura back into victory lane at Daytona. Though the #93 set the second-fastest time of the qualifying session, the car was promoted to pole position following post-qualifying technical inspection.
Acura is a three-time winner of the Rolex 24 at Daytona in recent years, winning back-to-back-to-back in 2021, 2022 and 2023, including with Meyer Shank Racing for the '22 and '23 wins.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. #93 Acura .
Renger van der Zande (#93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06): "I think this truly showcases what we've learned over the course of our first year working together as a group. There are so many people, so many resources, and so much talent, but we still needed to find a cohesive way of working together—and that is exactly what you see now when you look at our team. We're going into our second year of this Meyer Shank Racing and Honda Racing Corporation USA effort, and the homework we've done has been incredible. I've never seen it at this level before in any team. The only thing that we needed to improve last season was the execution, and today was a good example that we have learned how to do exactly that. We're starting from the front at Daytona in our #93 Acura ARX-06 and there's a long race ahead of us. We'll stay calm, stay cool, and go from here."
#40 Cadillac in first row
Louis Delètraz was only 0.028 of a second clear of van der Zande’s fastest lap with the #40 Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R qualifying third with a 1:34.069s. The #40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R moves up to second shared between Louis Deletraz and previous Rolex 24 winners Jordan Taylor and Colton Herta.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. #40 Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R
Louis Deletraz #40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing V-Series.R sponsored by DEX: "I'm very happy with qualifying. First, congrats to Cadillac and the #31 on pole position. I was just one-tenth shy of it. But qualifying is not the most important part here. We just need to be sure that we have a good race car. Honestly, it was a good session. From throughout the Roar to FP1, we kept improving the #40 Cadillac and felt confident and I think we have a great race car. Thanks to everyone at Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing. Now, we keep working and just a few hours to the race." Source: Cadillac
Porsche third
Two-time and defending Rolex 24 winner Felipe Nasr, did set a 1:34.183s to put the #7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 third on the grid after technical shuffle.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. #7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963
Acura with two top-four
Acura got their 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship campaign off to a strong start today, qualifying on pole and starting both Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian ARX-06s in the top-four for this weekend's 64th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona as Tom Blomqvist qualified his #60 Acura ARX-06 in fifth moving up to fourth.
Last year, Acura MSR scored P2 in the twice-round-the-clock classic with the #60 machine of Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Scott Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist finishing just 1.335 seconds behind first place.The sister #60 Acura ARX-06 enters this year's event with three of the same four drivers—AJ Allmendinger will be joining Braun, Dixon and Blomqvist for the 2026 iteration of the race. The four drivers share ten Rolex wins between them (Braun 3, Blomqvist 2, Dixon 4, Allmendinger 1) and will roll off fourth for Saturday's race.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. #60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06
Tom Blomqvist (#60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06) qualified fourth: "The field is very, very close. We had a really promising practice session this morning, so we were feeling pretty good going into qualifying but we just didn't have a great session. I got a bit out of sync and then another car spun in front of us and I had to kind of back it up. I think we missed the balance a little bit in qualifying and it wasn't as good as we had expected. Luckily, we don't have too much to worry about with 24 hours of racing ahead of us to move forward." Source: Acura
Inter Europol Competition’s pole in LMP2
The all-Bronze LMP2 qualifying session saw Jeremy Clarke taking the pole for the Inter Europol Competition’s #43 ORECA 07-Gibson shared with Tom Dillmann, António Félix da Costa, and Bijoy Garg.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. Inter Europol Competition’s #43 ORECA 07-Gibson
Corvette Racing on the class pole
Alexander Sims sped to the GTD PRO pole position Thursday for the Rolex 24 At Daytona to lead a strong showing for all five Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs to start the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.
Sims set a time of 1:45.106 (121.934 mph) in Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ #3 Z06 GT3.R that he will share this weekend with Antonio Garcia and Marvin Kirchhöfer. A Corvette will start from class pole position in the Rolex 24 At Daytona for the first time since 2021 when Sims was part of a qualifying race win for Corvette Racing.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ #3 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R
ALEXANDER SIMS, #3 CORVETTE Z06 GT3.R - GTD PRO POLE-WINNER: “It's really something special around here to be able to do a low fuel qualifying run with new tires. The car just comes alive. What a wonderful experience that was. Our Corvette was really nicely balanced, very nice lap, nice and clear with no traffic, but I had Nicky (Catsburg) up ahead, maybe punching a little bit of a hole for me. Yeah, brilliant, really, really brilliant.
(The race outlook and converting pole into a win) "There is a long time between now and then, but nevertheless, it's nice to start at the front of the field. Fingers crossed we can have a clean race because that's really the No. 1 goal at the moment - try and maintain the car in one piece, no issues through the first 23-and-a-half hours, be there in the race at the end and then be ready to fight.”
(More on qualifying) “Our Corvette was working pretty nicely in the qualifying session. It's honestly quite a privilege to be able to drive on low fuel. The car just comes alive compared to most of the states that you drive during practice where you're focusing on race prep. It was just nice conditions, I was able to get a nice gap and just focus on my own driving for all the laps and hook it all together. The Corvette is working well and hopefully we can carry that through to the race."
(Contending in this year's race after Corvette GTD win in 2025) “We had a decent race last year as well and finished second behind the Ford. It was great to see the AWA car get the class win last year. Our focus is pretty much on our program and what we're doing this year to try and optimize everything we've got. It seems like the car's in a decent spot right now. Qualifying pace versus race pace is a bit of a different story, so quite quickly our focus goes back to high-fuel runs and trying to get the car dialed in for that.” Source: Corvette Racing
#27 Aston Martin in GTD pole
Zacharie Robichon did set the benchmark in GTD class with a 1:45.113, winning the pole for the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo (2023 winner) he shares with Eduardo Barrichello, Tom Gamble, and Mattia Drudi.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo
Related Info
📷© Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2026. Three manufacturers within 0.146" during session 1
📷 © Piero Lonardo for Italian Endurance at ROLEX 24 at Daytona 2026. Pino tops session 6 with JDC-Miller Porsche 963
