Aghakhani, Mars repeat VP Racing Challenge wins at Daytona

Steven Aghakhani and Luca Mars duplicated their IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge wins from a day earlier on Sunday, staking early claims in their bids for 2024 class championships.

Aghakhani was the Race 2 overall winner and Le Mans Prototype 3 (P3) class victor in the No. 6 MLT Motorsports Ligier JS P320. Aghakhani had a spirited battle throughout with Cody Ware (No. 51 Rick Ware Racing with Ave Motorsports Ligier), even though Ware was facing a 10-second postrace penalty for an incident with another prototype on the first lap of the 45-minute race.

Ware passed polesitter Aghakhani for the lead while the cars were working through lapped traffic with 26 minutes remaining, but Aghakhani returned the favor in the same area of the Daytona International Speedway road course’s infield section 16 minutes later.

A late full-course caution for a car stopped on track resulted in a one-lap restart dash to the checkered flag, with Aghakhani easily rebuffing Ware’s advances. With the Ware penalty assessed, Aghakhani won by 4.036s over Marco Kacic (No. 87 FastMD Racing with Remstar Duqueine D08) and Ware wound up in eighth place.

“Traffic management is something we’ve always had sitting in the back of our head just from my racing background,” said Aghakhani, who’s raced in several series before joining the VP Racing Challenge this year. “It was very good to pull out some of those good memories and open that filing cabinet.