Track Notes: Porsche’s Rolex 24 Domination, F1 Shakedowns & NASCAR Winter Drama
Written by: Front Row Kenny and T. Walker.
Porsche Penske scores third straight Rolex 24 victory through fog chaos, F1’s Barcelona shakedowns see Hamilton log Ferrari SF-26 laps while Cadillac’s Pérez/Bottas debut.
Porsche owns January right now. Three straight overall wins in the Rolex 24 at Daytona cement Porsche Penske Motorsport as the current standard in global endurance racing, not just a nostalgic badge living off past glory. Felipe Nasr (Brazil), Laurin Heinrich (Germany), and Julien Andlauer (France) handled the headline duties in the No. 7 Porsche 963, but the real story might be how they survived a race-record caution period triggered by heavy overnight fog, then turned Sunday into a knife fight once the green finally flew again. A six-hour yellow at Daytona is absurd. It ripped up everyone’s carefully modeled strategy, yet Porsche still came out on top when it mattered.
NASCAR Snow Clash & RFK Tribute
Stock car season, on the other hand, is trying to get going while winter has other ideas. The NASCAR Cup Series Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium may end up snowed out. That’s the most short track racing way possible to start a year that already feels weird with the Charlotte “roval” gone for the fall race and the traditional oval back on the schedule. At the same time, RFK Racing is getting aggressively creative for the Daytona 500, rolling into Speedweeks with four cars and Cory LaJoie in a No. 99 entry built to be a chess piece in the draft. In honor of the late Greg Biffle, throughout the 2026 season RFK will feature his iconic, pointed-style No. 16 font decal on their cars. Meanwhile, Hendrick Motorsports just cut the ribbon on a 35,000 square foot fitness and clinical care hub that tells you exactly how seriously teams now treat pit crews and driver conditioning.
F1 2026 Shakedowns Kick Off
In open-wheel racing, the future is already here; you are just not allowed to watch it yet. Formula 1 teams have started private shakedowns in Barcelona with their new 2026 cars, media and fans parked firmly on the outside of the fence. Lewis Hamilton has already logged laps for Ferrari, getting his first real taste of the SF-26, while Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez have kicked off shakedown runs for the team’s debut. That’s a wild sentence to type: Cadillac on the F1 entry list, Bottas and Pérez on the Cadillac roster, and no signs of Williams during this testing period as the team has opted to skip it in favor of making their first appearance of the year at the Bahrain Test.
Beyond the Tracklines
Sports car and stock car storylines keep bleeding into the broader culture as well. McLaren has fired up the engine in its new hypercar aimed at a 2027 FIA WEC debut, a sign that the hypercar and LMH arms race is nowhere near cooling off. NASCAR and FOX Sports are partnering on a new documentary about the death of Dale Earnhardt, timed to the twenty fifth anniversary of his passing, which means an entire new generation is about to be walked through the day that changed everything for stock car safety. Mix that with Richard Childress receiving the Horatio Alger Award and you are reminded that this sport’s biggest inflection points are never just about the cars.
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