Daytona 24: #02 Cadillac leads during the night from #48

With eight hours complete in the Daytona 24, the #02 Cadillac currently leads the field as Kevin Magnussen lit up the timesheets.

The seventh hour started off with a close battle between in the GTD-Pro class as the #2 KCMG looked to fend off the #62 Risi Competizione.

But it wasn’t too long before another Full Course Yellow was deployed. The #6 Muehlner Motorsports car, driven by Moritz Kranz, went into the wall at Turn 5.

A lengthy safety car period came to an end as the seventh hour came to a close. And there was trouble for the #64 Team TGM which was hit with a penalty after running the red light in pit-lane.

The end of the safety car was less chaotic this time around as the drivers settled back into racing nicely.

Kevin Magnussen continued to hold a 2.1s in the #02 Cadillac from Simon Pagenaud in the #60 car.

There was drama with less than a quarter of an hour into hour seven as cars #19, #97, #14 and #44 were hit with a 3m30s-hold penalty in pit-lane for an improper final wave by procedure during the FCY period.

This was a blow for the #19 Winward Racing which at that point held a large lead in the GTD class.

With just over 16h30m remaining, Magnussen was lighting up the timing screens as he set a 1m34.000s, over a second faster than Pipo Derani who was driving the #31 Whelen Engineering.

With this pace, the #02 was able to stretch his gap over the #48 car by 8.071s, further showing Magnussen’s pace before he boxed to be replaced by Alex Lynn.

There was a brief off just before Turn 3 for the #38 LMP3 car which just managed to avoid the wall but suffered left-rear puncture and was forced to limp back to the pits.

The #02 led the Daytona 24 at the eight-hour point with the #8 leading the LMP2 field.

The #74 leads the LMP3 class, with the #62 car leading GTD-Pro and the #57 at the front of the GTD class with 16 hours now remaining.

The seventh and eighth hours of the Daytona 24 were relatively incident-free.

With the nighttime very much underway, it’s going to be a challenge for the drivers to keep the tyres warm as the track continues to cool.