Three IndyCar drivers added to Rolex 24 at Daytona
James Hinchcliffe, Spencer Pigot and RC Enerson will participate in the 2017 Rolex 24 at Daytona as the Roar Before The Rolex 24 begins this weekend.
Three more Verizon IndyCar Series drivers have joined the IMSA ranks for this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona endurance event.
James Hinchcliffe, Spencer Pigot and RC Enerson have been added to rosters for the Rolex 24. Both Hinchcliffe and Pigot will compete for Mazda Motorsports, while Enerson has joined the PR1/Mathiason effort.
Hinchcliffe, who drives in IndyCar for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and also recently featured as runner-up on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, is returning to the Rolex 24 field after a one-year absence. He missed the 2016 event as part of his recovery from the near-fatal crash he was involved in at the 2015 Indianapolis 500. This will be his fifth shot at the Daytona race, driving the No. 70 Mazda Prototype entry.
Pigot made his IndyCar debut last season, first with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and then finishing out the season as the co-driver of Ed Carpenter Racing’s No. 20 car on road and street courses. He has yet to be re-signed by the team for 2017.
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The 23-year-old will be participating in his second Rolex 24 in the No. 55 Mazda Prototype entry alongside Jonathan Bomarito and Tristan Nunez.
As for Enerson Autoweek reported on Wednesday that he will also be competing in the Prototype class. He’ll be in the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Ligier Prototype with Tom Kimber-Smith, Jose Gutierrez and Mike Guasch.
Enerson infamously withdrew from Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ now-shuttered Indy Lights effort at midseason to jump to IndyCar, and ran three races for Dale Coyne Racing in 2016. However, DCR has signed Sebastien Bourdais and Ed Jones as its two drivers for 2017, leaving Enerson still searching for a ride next season.
The trio are among several IndyCar drivers participating in the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Chip Ganassi Racing previously announced that Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Bourdais and Ryan Briscoe would be on their roster, and Graham Rahal is also expected to compete.
But before the race comes the testing round known as the Roar Before The Rolex 24, which gets underway on Friday, Jan. 6 at 10:20 a.m. ET with sessions throughout the weekend until Sunday, Jan. 8. Live timing and scoring for the Roar will be available through the IMSA website.
While you can’t watch it on TV, the Roar will be an opportunity for fans to see how these new teams of drivers perform as they shake down cars.
Hinchcliffe is a veteran of this particular endurance race and it should be interesting to have him back in the field again, but Pigot and Enerson are both still very new – and also potentially looking at this event as a calling card while they try to find themselves future race seats. Will they push themselves even harder to deliver, and potentially make a mistake? Their first chances behind the wheel are this weekend, followed by the actual race in just a few weeks.
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The Rolex 24 at Daytona begins Saturday, Jan. 28. It will be televised across the Fox Sports family of networks, starting with FOX from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET followed by Fox Sports 1 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The race then moves primarily over to Fox Sports’ secondary network Fox Sports 1 from 11 p.m. Saturday all the way to 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 29. It then concludes on Fox Sports 1 from 12:30 to 3 p.m. ET.