By: Marshall Pruett
12 minutes ago For the want of four minutes and a liter of fuel.All of endurance racing’s cruel and kind possibilities played out in the winding chapter that was IMSA’s GT Le Mans class at Daytona. Ford Chip Ganassi Racing No. 67 GT had been knocked around for large portions of the Rolex 24, but thanks to great driving and crafty race strategy, lost laps were recovered and the possibility of a win came into focus.Running on fumes, Richard Westbrook pitted for an emergency splash of gas at 12:34 p.m.; by 12:38, the red flag waved, sealing the team’s fate as its closest contenders continued to circulate.Falling from first to fourth, the beneficiary of Ford’s misfortune was BMW Team RLL, whose No. 25 M8 GTE went through all manner of adversity before those fateful four minutes transformed a runner-up result into a grand victory for the factory team.BMW’s win would have felt like a gift in one of IMSA’s sprint races. But in the context of a 24-hour race, where calamities of varying degrees tend to visit most of the cars in the field, it felt like part of the show. Had IMSA thrown the red flag a few minutes earlier…if the Ford was able to stretch its tank a few more miles…it could have been Westbrook, Ryan Briscoe, and Scott Dixon celebrating in Victory Lane.