By Holly Cain-IMSA Wire Service
Jimmie Johnson will share driving duties with Simon Pagenaud, Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Rockenfeller for this weekend s Rolex 24 at Daytona. Photo: IMSA Wire Service
NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson showed up at Daytona International Speedway on Friday morning for the Roar Before the Rolex 24 feeling more like he was in mid-season form than climbing behind the wheel for the annual season start-up session most racers use to brush off the dust.
That’s because since Johnson completed his final NASCAR full-time season in November, the stock car champ has spent the last months testing IndyCars around the country – from famed tracks in Laguna Seca, California, to Sebring, Florida – preparing for his inaugural season in the NTT IndyCar Series driving road course events for Chip Ganassi Racing.
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By Staff Report NASCAR.com December 18, 2020 at 11:36 AM
Fresh off his first career NASCAR Cup Series championship, Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott will compete in the 2021 running of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Rolex 24 in January at Daytona International Speedway.
Elliott will return to the site of one of his five 2020 wins when he teams with Felipe Nasr, Pipo Derani and Mike Conway in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R to run the twice-around-the-clock race for the first time in his young career.
“The Rolex 24 is such a major event, and it’s a race that anybody across any type of motorsports really respects,” Elliott said in a team release. “I think everyone wants to win a watch before their career is over. It’s something different and a completely different element o