If the Chili Bowl has become an all-star event to kick off the oval racing season, the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway serves the same purpose for the road racing set.
Since the 3-hour Daytona Continental was expanded to 2,000 kilometers in 1964, and to a full 24 hours two years later, America's longest road race has attracted an impressive cast of racers from the USA and abroad.
This year is no exception. With 53 cars set to compete across four classes, some 210 drivers are slated to log seat time Saturday and Sunday, including 14 of the 33 drivers who started in the 2014 Indianapolis 500.
Chief among the "guest" drivers are former 500 and IndyCar Series champions Ryan Hunter-Reay, Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan, and four-time Champ Car-era titlist Sebastien Bourdais, who in 2014 shared the Rolex 24-winning Action Express Racing Corvette DP (Daytona Prototype) in the Prototype class with eventual Tudor United SportsCar Championship champions Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi.
Simon Pagenaud, James Hinchcliffe, Graham Rahal, Charlie Kimball and Jack Hawksworth are the other full-time Indy car drivers who will moonlight at Daytona this weekend.
"The 24 kind of kicks off the year and has become part of my calendar," remarked Hunter-Reay, who will drive a Riley-BMW DP for Starworks Motorsport. "I always look forward to it before the start of the IndyCar season. It definitely helps you get in race shape after a long layoff. You can spend all the time you want in a gym, but when it comes to race craft and racing, it really matters about how much time you have behind the wheel."
While most of the guest drivers this weekend are hired outside guns, a few will simply move across to a different department of the company they already work for. Rahal, for example, will wedge himself into the factory BMW Z4 that Rahal Letterman Racing fields in the TUSCC GT Le Mans class.
Meanwhile, Chip Ganassi basically stages a four-day retreat that brings members of his IndyCar, sports car and NASCAR stock car teams together for 24 hours of high-speed bonding.
The main focus is on Ganassi's No. 01 Riley-Ford prototype that contests the full TUSCC season with veteran Scott Pruett and new recruit Joey Hand joined at Daytona by Kimball and Ganassi development driver Sage Karam.
"Every year, there's just something magical about coming to Daytona," said Pruett, who with four Rolex 24 overall wins and four Grand-Am-sanctioned championships is the most pedigreed regular in the TUSCC. "I raced here for the first time in 1985 and it's still just as exciting for me now as it was then."
Ganassi recruited Hand to return to America after several years racing for BMW in the German DTM series. The 35-year-old is a key element in Ford's plan to compete in the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans with a racing version of the GT supercar recently unveiled in Detroit.
Hand showed his mettle right away, pacing one of the eight sessions during Roar Before the 24 testing at Daytona.
"It's great to jump in and have a good feel for the car and be able to go quick right away," Hand remarked. "It's a great feeling for sure. I just hope it stays that way all the way through the end of this race."
But the effort put into Ganassi's No. 02 "all-star" car driven by Dixon and Kanaan with stock car stars Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson is just as impressive. The guest car actually scored the overall Rolex 24 win in 2006 in the hands of Dixon, Casey Mears and the late Dan Wheldon.
It's a great opportunity for the NASCAR drivers to log some road racing miles and get to know their Indianapolis-based teammates better.
Larson, the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series rookie of the year, has the unusual distinction of competing at both the Chili Bowl and the Rolex 24, just one week apart.
It's the 21-year-old driver's second run in the Daytona road race.
"I'm a lot more comfortable this year," Larson said. "Last year was only my fourth or fifth road race ever, but I really enjoyed it. This year during the Roar, I felt like I got the hang of it a lot better and was pretty quick."
Going from a midget on a tiny dirt oval indoors to a rear-engine prototype on the expanses of Daytona's 3.56-mile road course is about as drastic a change that any driver can experience.
"It's so different," he admitted. "But after jumping in a lot of cars the last few years, it isn't too hard for me to adapt. I tend to adapt to different vehicles very quickly, so maybe it's a natural thing. Now I don't even think about what kind of car I'm getting into. My brain and body just kind of automatically know what to do.
"It's a good trait to have, and I'm glad I was given that gift."
This is the second year American sports car racing will run united under the TUSCC banner, and some vestiges of the 15-year battle for control between the American Le Mans Series and Grand Am still remain.
"Balance of Performance" has become a heated watchword as officials from sanctioning body IMSA try to achieve similar lap times from wildly different cars in both the Prototype and GTLM classes.
The main point of contention is the perceived favoritism toward the Grand Am-based Daytona Prototype cars over the P2-class cars that transferred from the ALMS. DP cars won nine of 11 races in 2014, and P2 drivers were not a factor in the overall championship.
Several teams with long-term ties to ALMS and Grand Am departed during and after the 2014 season, with many (including sports car stalwart Dyson Racing) switching to the SCCA-sanctioned Pirelli World Challenge and its series of shorter sprint races. Ironically, PWC director of competition Geoff Carter recently left that series to take on a similar role for the TUSCC.
Early signs indicate that at least one P2-spec car has the capability to run with the Daytona Prototypes on larger tracks like Daytona in 2015: Michael Shank Racing is switching from a Riley-Ford DP to an HPD/Honda-powered Ligier P2 car in 2015, and it was very competitive in the Roar test.
"I've run a DP car for 11 years with Jim France, and that group and that platform brought us to where we are at today, but I felt we needed to make a move for the future," said team owner Shank. "Sports car racing will be going to a more common platform in 2017, and hopefully with any luck it will be a platform I can race at Daytona or Fuji or Le Mans. We don't know what that car is going to look like, but it's way more similar to a P2 than a DP.
"We're going to P2 with an eye on the long term so this team can go to Le Mans in 2016," he added. "But right now we're anxious to get to Daytona."