The fight for top honors in GT was also a nail-biter, in what was being billed as the largest collection of international GT driver talent ever assembled at Daytona.

Magnus Racing ended up on top with its star-studded lineup of Andy Lally, Richard Lietz, Rene Rast and team owner John Potter, which scored its first victory in Rolex Series competition in GRAND-AM's biggest ever event.

Magnus Racing celebrated its maiden victory in GRAND-AM's biggest-ever race. (Photo: Brian Cleary/GRAND-AM)

They led a Porsche 1-2-3 sweep of the class podium as well.

Lietz edged out fellow Porsche factory driver Wolf Henzler in the No. 67 TRG Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car by 9.412 seconds. But it was Lally who made the pass for the eventual win, overtaking the No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche of Leh Keen with a few hours to go.

"There were a lot of very, very strong race cars out there," said Lally, who earned his fourth Rolex 24 class win. "We were a little bit off sequence [in stops]. I think I had a little bit fresher tires than [Leh] did, so I was able to get a little bit better run out of the bus stop [chicane]. The draft is so huge that I was able to come up alongside."

Keen and the Brumos Racing Porsche faded in the closing stages due to a broken splitter and intermittent power steering, which gave two-time European Le Mans Series champion Marc Lieb quite a handful.

However, the Porsche factory driver ace was able to hold onto a third place finish for he and co-drivers Leh Keen, Andrew Davis and five-time Rolex 24 winner Hurley Haywood, who made his 40th and final race start.

"It's really disappointing because when you look at the race, we were fighting for the lead for 22 hours, and in the end, we were lucky to just finish on the podium," Lieb said. "The whole crew, all the drivers, did a fantastic job. This tight competition, you make one small mistake, it keeps you away from the top step of the podium."

The No. 67 TRG Porsche of Henzler, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Spencer Pumpelly, Marc Goossens and Steve Bertheau had splitter problems of their own, but elected to replace it during one of the final caution periods. That made all the difference, as the German ace brought his 911 GT3 Cup car home in second.

"It was the right decision in the end because it helped me to have a good balanced car," Henzler said. "I tried everything in the end to catch Richard Lietz but I couldn't close the gap. They were just too good and the race was too short [in the end]."

The No. 57 Stevenson Motorsports Camaro GT.R of Robin Liddell, John Edwards and Ronnie Bremer came home one lap behind in fourth, followed by the lone-remaining Risi Competizione Ferrari F458 Italia Grand Am driven by Toni Vilander, Olivier Beretta and Andrea Bertolini, the highest-placed of the new Ferraris.

Risi's other Prancing Horse dropped out early with engine failure, while the No. 94 Turner Motorsport BMW M3, another pre-race favorite, retired in the third hour with similar issues.

The highly anticipated new Audi R8 GRAND-AM cars fielded by APR Motorsport and Oryx Racing suffered a series of mechanical failures and incidents, most notably clutch issues. They finished 31st and 32nd in class, respectively.

In NAEC standings, Magnus Racing leads the way with 16 points, ahead of Brumos Racing (15) and the No. 67 TRG Porsche (13). Points were awarded on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis at six-hour intervals in the Rolex 24.

The 50th Rolex 24 will likely go down in the books as the most successful GRAND-AM event ever, with estimates of 60,000-80,000 fans in attendance to witness one of the closest finishes in race history.

Next up for the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series is the Porsche 250 at Barber Motorsports Park, scheduled for Mar. 30-31.

RESULTS: 50th Rolex 24 at Daytona

John Dagys is SPEED.com’s Sportscar Racing Reporter, focusing on all major domestic and international championships. You can follow him on Twitter @johndagys or email him at