Despite playing second fiddle to the famed Daytona 500, the Rolex 24 at Daytona is still a big deal. It may not have full grandstands through the night or clogged airports throughout the weekend like its more famous counterpart, but according to race organizers, 2026 was the biggest Rolex 24 on record.
Porsche-Penske and its driver, Felipe Nasr, ultimately won their third straight title, giving the team three-peat status. However, this race wasn’t all about Porsche. Dozens of teams vied to keep Penske and Nasr away from a third watch—General Motors was one of them.
We sat down with GM Motorsports’ director of motorsport competition engineering, Mark Stielow, ahead of the race to talk about the cars on the grid, the teams racing at the event, and how both Chevrolet and Cadillac’s performance divisions have evolved through the years. Stielow even gave us some insight into the company’s ambitions for the future.
Cadillac had two teams racing at the Rolex 24 this year: Wayne Taylor Racing, which finished 6th and 11th place in the GTP category despite a fire 22 hours in, and Whelen Motorsport, whose Jack Atiken finished a close, but devastating, second to Porsche-Penske’s Nasr.
Although those results weren’t exactly ideal, the energy of Stielow and the entire GM team signaled high hopes for future races: "Daytona 24 hours is iconic, but they don't make movies about winning this, right? There’s got to be one movie, right?"
Stielow brought up LeMans a few times during the conversation; Cadillac’s performance last year wasn’t exactly what the team had hoped for, with the cars unable to reach the podium. So, when asked about what Cadillac had done differently between LeMans and Daytona, Stielow elaborated on what the team did to rectify those former disadvantages.
"We had a distinct top speed disadvantage at LeMans straight away compared to some of our competitors," Stielow notes. "At the time we chose our adjustable aero device, being on the lip above, on the front. So we went to the rear tails and doing that allowed us to kind of change our spot in the liftover drag curve on the on the alligation, moved it more towards a little drag."
Clearly, General Motors has spent an enormous amount of time on its motorsports program. The fruits of that labor have come by way of more customer orders than it can fill. The current team has grown the program exponentially since 2023, and the results both on and off the track speak for themselves.
Stielow explained that they’ve seen teams and customers around the world jump from other brands to Corvette and Cadillac race cars, and they’re intentionally limiting what they produce to offer a more white-glove experience, similar to how Ferrari or Porsche chooses their teams.
"So we first kind of put out the, 'Hey, we're taking orders for the Corvette.' We had a lot of hand raisers. The demand was way higher than the supply. And we chose to build a cadence. We'd produce X number of cars every next number of weeks. So, people who are interested, we just say we'll put you in our build sequence here, and we can deliver your car at this time. So Dragon Speed, you had to kind of wait until we got through different people that we were earlier hand raisers.”
For the Rolex 24, the modified Corvette C8s finished 4th place in both the GTD and GT3 Pro classes, despite a few penalties, spin-outs, and one suspension failure. But even with the less-than-stellar results, the GM Motorsports team was in high spirits about what they were able to accomplish, especially as their team expands to multiple continents.
When asked what this type of expansion meant for the team and the program as a whole, Stielow had just seven words:
"The sun never sets on GM Motorsports."
So, what’s next for the GM Motorsports team? Well, Steilow and the various other team members we talked to were pretty tight-lipped about it, as you would expect. But it was made clear that their time and energy are on the Corvette racing program and doing what they can to continue pumping out podium finishes and stealing teams over from the European brands, which is about as American as it gets.
"Corvette Racing is key to GM Motorsports' DNA. We're always going to be in Corvette racing. And as long as we support it well and we continue to bring home the key wins and championships, our leadership is happy."
