No.93 Acura promoted to pole position for the 2026 24 Hours of Daytona
- Ghazlan Atqiya Firmansyah
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
Following post-race technical inspections, the No.93 Acura will be starting the 24 Hours of Daytona from pole after the No.31 Cadillac was demoted to the back of the GTP field.
With Dutch driver Renger van der Zande at the wheel, the No.93 Acura of Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb Agajanian initially secured second on the grid, falling just 0.102 seconds short of Jack Aitken’s pace-setting No.31 Cadillac.
The post-race technical inspection revealed that the No.31's friction area of the rear skid block was beyond the permitted tolerance, demoting it to the back of the GTP field.
This promotes the No.93 Acura to pole position, followed by the No.40 Cadillac of Wayne Taylor Racing in second and last year's winner, the No.7 Porsche Penske Motorsport, in third.
The No.93 ARX-06 established itself as a qualifying powerhouse last season, securing a hat-trick of consecutive pole positions from the streets of Detroit through to Road America. Van der Zande is set to share the car with Nick Yelloly, Álex Palou and Kakunoshin Ohta.
Their experienced teammates aboard the No.60 car will start from fourth, featuring an all-star lineup of past Daytona 24 overall winners: Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Scott Dixon and A.J. Allmendinger.
Following the qualifying session, Van der Zande said: "I think this truly showcases what we've learned over the course of our first year working together as a group.
"There are so many people, so many resources, and so much talent, but we still needed to find a cohesive way of working together, and that is exactly what you see now when you look at our team.
"We're going into our second year of this Meyer Shank Racing and Honda Racing Corporation USA effort, and the homework we've done has been incredible. I've never seen it at this level before in any team.
"The only thing that we needed to improve last season was the execution, and today was a good example that we have learned how to do exactly that. We're starting from the front at Daytona in our No.93 Acura ARX-06, and there's a long race ahead of us. We'll stay calm, stay cool, and go from here."
Blomqvist said: "The field is very, very close.
"We had a really promising practice session this morning, so we were feeling pretty good going into qualifying, but we just didn't have a great session. I got a bit out of sync, and then another car spun in front of us, and I had to kind of back it up.
"I think we missed the balance a little bit in qualifying, and it wasn't as good as we had expected. Luckily, we don't have too much to worry about with 24 hours of racing ahead of us to move forward."
The No.93 Acura will lead the 60-car field to green when the 24 Hours of Daytona gets underway this Saturday, 24 January at 13:30 local time (18:30 GMT).
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