Winning the Rolex 24 at Daytona is a career highlight for any driver, but for Dane Cameron, the victory was especially sweet and emotional. Cameron has three IMSA championships, including one with Penske in the Acura days. But through all of those, including title with Turner Motorsport and Action Express Racing, he had yet to achieve even a class victory at Daytona.
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“My first 24 hours at Daytona was 2009, so in a bunch of different categories, I just never seemed to have any luck here in any way, shape, or form,” Cameron said. “Never had a podium here. Never. I don’t even know if I’ve ever finished on the lead lap here, to be honest. It’s always been the one that got away, and the one that just didn’t seem to be able to get done for some reason. Kind of compared to what Josef [Newgarden] went through last year at the [Indianapolis] 500 – you don’t want to not have one without the other. You don’t want to win championships without having the big race to go with it.
“Definitely proud of everything that I was able to achieve with different teams and brands in the championship, but it always felt like you were missing something to not have success in the 24 Hours at Daytona. To have that as an overall is definitely something that I’m super, super proud of; super happy for. Great to do it with this team, as well, after being here for a number of years now. Kind of slipped through our fingers in the Acura days, for sure.”
Matt Campbell, who formed part of the winning driver line-up alongside Felipe Nasr, Newgarden and Cameron, was Nasr’s full-season partner in 2023, but for this season he’s swapping with Cameron and going to the World Endurance Championship program for PPM. Like Nasr, it’s not his first Daytona win – the pair won GTD PRO together, along with Mathieu Jaminet, with Pfaff Motorsports in 2022 – but it is his first overall.
“I’m glad it came our way,” Campbell said. “After all the hard work, the difficult year we had in 2023, especially here, I feel this is the best gift we could give ourselves. I’m very pleased for the team, for the whole work they’ve done all week.”