Daytona's Rolex 24 Was the Start of the End for the Acura NSX GT3

With a Ferrari 296 GT3 gnawing at her car's white and green vinyl, Katherine Legge dove into Turn 2 of Daytona's infield with her team's Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 to escape dropping a position, while staging an attack on the slower Porsche 911 GT3R ahead of her. Legge and her three teammates from Gradient Racing wasted no time putting pressure on the GTD Pro drivers in the class above. They had a strong start to the 24-hour race, beginning the endurance battle in P3 among GTD entrants. Unlike previous years, No. 66 was the only NSX in the 59-car field and likely the last time we'll see one compete at the Rolex 24 event where it had debuted.

While 2023 was the final model year for Acura's sports car, Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) trackside engineer Wayne Gross told us 2024 will be the final year they support the NSX's GT3 program in IMSA, SRO, and Japan's Super GT. The GT3 car will remain homologated for racing until 2029, meaning a privately owned team could technically enter one, though it's unlikely. Still, the NSX section within the 18,000-pound buffet of control arms, turbochargers, powertrains, carbon-fiber bits, and brake pads that is HRC's semi-trailer will go the way of the K-mart K Café at the end of this season.

Endurance Since 2017

The NSX GT3 debuted at the Daytona endurance race in 2017, and until last weekend's race, it had completed the grueling 24 hours of racing every year without a DNF (did not finish). During the 2022 IMSA season, the Gradient NSX finished second place in its GTD class at Long Beach and went on to accomplish the Acura's best finish in the series with a win at Road Atlanta to close out the season. In 2020, while owned by Meyer Shank Racing, this NSX chassis won an IMSA championship in its class. Though the team had a solid start to this year's longest race event in North America, an electrical issue prevented it from finishing.

"There was some [interference] in the throttle signal that was putting the car into limp mode," Gradient Racing team owner Andris Laivins explained to us after the race. "The default throttle position in these cars is about 3000 rpm. While in that fixed throttle position, it sort of prevents drivers from gear changes. Regardless of what the drivers would do with their feet, it would stay in that fixed throttle position."

Unfortunately for Laivins and his Gradient Racing team, the mysterious electrical gremlin reared its ugly head more than once. After striking race debris that blew apart the NSX's front bumper, headlight, and tire, the team made the difficult decision to call it quits after agreeing to manage the multiclass race traffic with intermittent throttle issues posed too great a safety risk to continue.

After nearly 13 hours of race time and 237 laps, Gradient retired from the Rolex 24, ending the NSX GT3's final appearance at Daytona early. Eighteen other race cars met the same fate, including two Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs, two Ford Mustang GT3, and one of the Acura ARX-06 GTP cars of Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Motorsports, which is also supported with help from HRC.

Honda Helpers

We toured the three-trailer setup HRC brought to Daytona to support Gradient's NSX, both Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Grand Touring Prototype entries, and five Civic Type Rs that filled out the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race ahead of the Rolex 24 main event. Two trucks serve as air-conditioned control rooms where their engineers watch telemetry like surgeons paying close attention to a patient's vitals. The trailer includes a dedicated debrief room, for team consultation and post-race argument. Gross told us most of the consultation and debriefing business has moved to video conference on Microsoft Teams, which started as a necessary precaution during the pandemic.