ROLEX 24 AT DAYTONA

January 23, 2025

Elliott Skeer

Mike Rockenfeller

Dan Goldberg

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are pleased to be joined by our Motul Pole Award winners for three of the four classes here at the 63rd Rolex 24 at Daytona. We will start to your left with the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, Elliott Skeer.

Elliott's best lap was 1:46.634 seconds. This is his first career IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

He and his teammates won their first race, first WeatherTech Championship race last September at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The top 16 qualifiers in GTD qualified within a second of Elliott's time.

Elliott, congratulations on the pole. What made the difference in that session and how important is it for you and the team to be starting up front for this race?

ELLIOTT SKEER: Thank you. It's quite a special feeling. Obviously for a 24-hour race it's not the most important pole of the year in terms of position, but for morale, for having new systems in the car, a whole new engineering philosophy needed to get performance out of these cars, the torque sensors.

It just helps us show that the way we're going about it we think is working for us. So ultimately as the driver now, you're not only dealing with the car but with the torque, we're flying back to the engineers, they're making adjustments as well.

There's so much going on, so it really takes a cohesive team not only to get one lap going, but a full stint going. We still don't know how it's going to race, and that's the big question here.

Ultimately for the first goal of the weekend we checked the box and just everything went right with it, got a little draft, and ultimately just had enough to get it at the end.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Elliott. Let's slide over to the center in the GTD Pro Motul Pole Award winner in the No. 64 Ford Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3, Mike Rockenfeller. Mike's best lap was 1:45.523 seconds. This is his second IMSA championship level pole position; first since the GRAND-AM Rolex Series at Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 25, 2006, when he was on the pole in the Daytona Prototype class and overall.

This is his second pole position for the Mustang GT3 in the WeatherTech Championship. First was Gianmarco Levorato in the GTD class at Virginia International Raceway last August.

This is the first GTD Pro pole for Ford. The team swept the first two positions in GTD pole qualifying. It's been a long time coming since the last pole. Do you remember that pole, and what does it mean for you to get up front here today?

MIKE ROCKENFELLER: Yeah, I don't remember that pole, to be fair. But yes, it's obviously a great day. I think you said it right at the end. It's one thing you would like to get, but really the race on Sunday is what we all want to win.

It doesn't mean a whole lot for the race, but for us as a team with Ford in the second year now with the Mustang, I think it's a great achievement.

We really focused on that. It was something we wanted to get, as well, even though we all know it's not that important for the race, but still, it's important for our team, for our program.

We really prepared for it. The car was fantastic to drive, as you can imagine, to do those laps. Yeah, I could really push it.

I think the big difference was I don't know why nobody did it, but I did this kind of heat soak. So I went back in the pits right after my out lap and I was waiting just the brake temps that they get into the tire. And then it's so cold that it gave me a lot more grip.

You could see it to the sister car, as well, and I think that was a good decision and it worked out. That's why we're on pole.

We will enjoy it until we go racing.

THE MODERATOR: We'll slide over to your right in the LMP2 class Motul Pole Ward winner, No. 22 United Autosports Oreca LMP2 Daniel Goldberg. His best lap was 1:38.676. This is his second career IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship pole, first since 2021, August of 2021 at Road America in the LMP3 class. Daniel snapped a run of five consecutive Rolex 24 pole positions by Ben Keating.

Congratulations. Very hard-fought session. A lot of different drivers changing position there at the top. How did you pull it off?

DAN GOLDBERG: It's been a lot of work with the team. Last year was our first year together and I was close a few times, a couple tenths away. The pole was elusive for me, and this year just worked a lot in the off-season on myself and worked really hard with the team. I got a lot of great co-drivers that I get to chase their data, their video, and try to inch closer and closer.

I will say our engineers were watching the GTD Pro session and took a little cue and we came in and, let the warm brakes heat up my tires a little better, so thanks for that.

It feels really good. I've been chasing this for the whole season, and really excited.

Q. If you could size up the field a little bit, there have been different makes up front, even through the Roar, different ones. As you acknowledge it's important to start there, but this is a very competitive field.

MIKE ROCKENFELLER: Yeah, I mean, it's crazy competitive, and I would say more competitive than last year for sure. It's going to be tough, and I think we saw throughout the sessions that we are clearly good on one lap. I think we struggle a bit more over a stint with our tire deg.

That's something I'm a bit worried about, and if you see in qually, it's always the tire kind of over -- yeah, it over comes the issues you have a bit, and that's why I said, the way we treated it for qually I think was really good and spot on, and that gave us an advantage, but that is not valid for the race.

Being in the race is a whole different story, and you will see we will have to fight a lot, and that's good. It's 24 hours; everybody should have a good chance here. You don't make mistakes, you stay out of the pits and you keep the wheels turning, I think that's the key at the end to be there, and then we see Sunday, three, four hours to go if we have a shot or not.

Q. Question for Elliott. As you probably know, the combined classification is separate for the classes. How's is going to be like, you're not going to be in the midst of GTD Pro cars, you're going to the in the field?

ELLIOTT SKEER: Yeah, it's definitely with the new rules this year on the GT to GTD Pro will be interesting for us especially. It minimizes clean air, so we're going to be spending a lot more time in dirty air, especially come restarts, which we know there's going to be obviously a fair bit of in this race.

Yeah, clean air on your own qualifying run is one thing, but then in the midst of what is going to be an incredible battle for an entire day, that's going to be a whole new thing. So there is still so many things to learn, not just power side, but in battling in aero with some new drivers. There's a lot to happen in a day's worth of racing here.

Who knows, right? Some of the guys you might pass a couple laps before on a restart are ahead of you again. They had to deal with it last year; we're dealing with it this year. We'll see where it evolves to. It does make it a little nicer, though, in terms of the guys around you are most likely poor position, so it does clean up a little bit of that, but ultimately we need to go racing and see how it performs.

Q. You came close so many times in the last year and now you've finally broken through and done it. What's the dominant emotion? Is it pride, satisfaction, maybe just relief?

DAN GOLDBERG: I'll say satisfaction. I've been really working for this. The guys have said it; it doesn't mean as much for this race, but especially in our class that stacks up the bronzes against each other, definitely everyone feels good.

Q. Daniel, that was a close session for the bronze drivers. How tough is it to be on top of that tree?

DAN GOLDBERG: Yeah, it's very, very competitive. That's how bronze is. Last year most qualifyings were within a few tenths. It's extremely competitive. We all work really hard on our craft, as well, just like all the other drivers out here. It's gotten quite competitive, in particular last year.