João Barbosa wins the 24h of Daytona

João Barbosa has just become the first portuguese driver to win the 24 Hours of Daytona race, crossing the line in 1st place with his #9 Porsche/Riley car of the Action Express Racing team. The other 3 drivers who sat on that car and contributed to the victory by driving many hours each, were the american Terry Borcheller, the brit Ryan Dalziel and the german Mike Rockenfeller.

The winning car of the 24h of Daytona 2010

This is important as the 24 hours of Daytona is still one of the most prestigious endurance races of the world, despite being contested by the unimpressive Daytona Prototypes of the GrandAm championship, known by being slow and lacking the technology advances seen in other sportscar series. The event attracts some very big names of NASCAR, IndyCar and various other series around the world – we could see in this year’s lineup folks like Jimmie Johnson, Juan-Pablo Montoya, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Justin Wilson, AJ Allmendinger, Sebastien Bourdais, Ryan Hunter-Reay, or also our own Pedro Lamy. The #9 car beat them all today despite being a bit of an underdog.

For portuguese motorsport, this is one of the most important achievements by a driver that I can remember. Possibly on par or close to the P-WRC championships won by Armindo Araújo and Rui Madeira, the F1 podium by Tiago Monteiro, or the junior open-wheel championships won by Pedro Lamy and Álvaro Parente. Congratulations to João as well as the rest of the team.