Florida Sports Wire

  By Don Coble, Special to Florida Sports Wire   DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Few things are probable in racing, especially in a 24-hour endurance race. However, the combined forces of Roger Penske’s resources and Nick Tandy’s experience proved to be a grouping destined to win the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Penske won America’s iconic twice-around-the-clock race a year ago with the same No. 7 Porsche 963, but he only returned one driver – Felipe Nasr. He added Tandy and Laurens Vanthoor, and the trio were the class of the GT Prototype division in conditions that included wind gusts and bitter cold early and warmer temperatures in the final six hours. In the process, Tandy became the most complete endurance driver in sports car history. He is the only person to win every major endurance race – the 24 Hours of Daytona, Le Mans, Spa-Francorchamps and the Nürburgring. “And some (three 12-hour) Sebrings and a Petit LeMans (at Road Atlanta) is dream-come-true stuff,” Tandy said. Tand...

  By Don Coble, Special to Florida Sports Wire DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Staying awake for more than 22 hours and driving bumper-to-bumper will likely cause road rage. But when it appeared two team cars ganged up to knock the leading GT Daytona Pro car out of the lead with less than two hours remaining in the 63 rd Rolex 24 at Daytona, road rage turned to seething discontent for Chevrolet Corvette Tommy Milner. Milner seemed to have a reason to be angry. A BMW M4 GT3 EVO driven by Augusto Farfus for Paul Miller Racing was running three laps down and 12 th in class. The car left the pit road shortly before Milner, and second-place Connor De Phillippi in another Paul Miller BMW made a pit stop. Farfus didn’t get up to speed when he returned to the track. When Milner caught him on track, Farfus moved left and right around the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway 3.56-mile road course, seemingly to block Milner and help De Phillippi make a pass. De Phillippi saw an opening when...

  By Don Coble, Special to Florida Sports Wire DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. Surviving 24 hours of high-speed racing at Daytona International Speedway is challenging, but race teams also had to contend with tire issues this weekend. . Instead of handing a tire company a blank check to ensure the jet-quick prototypes had the fresh grip they needed for the 3.56-mile course, IMSA limited teams to just 21 sets of tires for qualifying on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday’s twice-around-the-clock annual event. In the first seven hours, it was hard to track which GT Prototype teams skipped tire changes, changing only right-side tires, left-side tires or all four. In fact, some drivers said they couldn’t figure out what their own teams were doing. The result was 27 lead changes with 17 hours to go. At 8:40 p.m. – the seven-hour mark – the WTR Cadillac for Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz and Kamui Kobayashi was in the lead, followed by the pole-sitting BMW M Hybrid V8 for Phillip Eng, Dries Vath...

By Don Coble, Special to Florida Sports Wire DAYTONA BEACH – Hurley Haywood was the best at surviving 24 hours of racing when the Rolex 24 at Daytona was an endurance race. His sports cars didn’t have power steering, sequential shifting or an anti-lock braking system. Engines and suspension parts were handmade by mechanics and not built by 3-D robots and engineers with space-aged materials. Much like sedans that self-park and alert drivers not to drift over the centerline, modern sports cars have become so advanced they've transformed the approach to long-distance racing, according to Haywood. “The configuration has not changed, but the conditions have changed,” the 76-year-old legendary driver said shortly after the 63 rd Rolex 24 at Daytona started Saturday afternoon at the Daytona International Speedway. “The new generation of drivers and manufacturers look at the guys that are really good at video games because video games give you so much information that you have. You ...

 By Don Coble, Special to Florida Sports Wire DAYTONA BEACH – Nobody knows racing better than Roger Penske. His 20 victories in the Indianapolis 500 are a milestone that won’t be matched. He also has 17 IndyCar Series championships and is the reigning car owner for the IMSA GT Prototype and NASCAR Series champions. A year ago, he watched as his four-driver tandem took the checkered flag at the Rolex 24 at Daytona after they completed 791 laps – about 2,816 miles – in a Porsche 963 to beat a Cadillac prototype by 2.112 seconds after racing for 24 hours. So what did the man motorsports calls “The Captain” do? Replaced three of the drivers. The only driver returning to the No. 7 Porsche is Brazilian Felipe Nasr. Gone were two-time defending Indy 500 Champion Josef Newgarden, Dane Cameron and Matt Campbell, replaced by Nick Tandy of Great Britain and Laurens Vanthoor of Belgium. The only thing that remained the same was that the car still had consistent speed. “This is the best time of...

 JACKSONVILLE –  The Jacksonville Jaguars have agreed to terms with Liam Coen to become the team’s head coach.  “To repeat my message earlier this week, I am deeply committed to building a winner here in Jacksonville,” Jaguars team owner Shad Khan said today.  “I also believe in being judged by actions, not words.  That’s why I took swift and decisive action this week to hire Liam Coen as the new head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars.  I am pumped that Liam is accepting the challenge and opportunity to build the winner that Jaguars fans and partners fully deserve.  I know our players feel the same.”   “Becoming the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars is an opportunity of a lifetime, and one that I am going to run with to instill a championship culture and winning tradition here in Duval,” Coen said. “This doesn’t happen without the support and opportunities that my family and I have been afforded throughout my career, especially during this pa...

 JACKSONVILLE – University of Tennessee assistant coach Payne Denman made the best impression any coach could on those he coaches when he ran away with the JAGA First Coast Amateur at Deerwood Country Club, recording a nine-shot win over the 96-player field, which included three Tennessee golf team members he traveled to Jacksonville with. Denman fired rounds of 63-69-66—198 (-18) to record the lowest 54-hole score in the nine-year history of the First Coast Amateur. It was five better than the first-year mark of 203 (-13) established by Brandon Mancheno in 2017.  The nine-shot win also eclipsed Mancheno’s former largest victory margin of six. Settling for runner-up at nine-under 207 were University of North Florida redshirt sophomore Filippo Serra of Switzerland (69-66-72) and Ali Khan of Ball State University (69-67-71). The champion and other top finishers receive World Amateur Golf Ranking points, which has been the case since the First Coast Amateur’s inception in 2017. ...

 Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, who led the NFL in passer rating and became the first QB in NFL history to throw for over 4,000 yards and rush for over 800 yards in a season, is the 2024 NFL Most Valuable Player chosen in voting conducted by the Professional Football Writers of America (PFWA). Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, who led the NFL with 2,005 rushing yards, is the league’s Offensive Player of the Year. Denver Broncos cornerback Patrick Surtain II, who surrendered the fewest receiving yards at his position when targeted by opposing quarterbacks, is the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year. Jackson, the 51st MVP honored by the PFWA, wins the award for the second consecutive year and for third time overall (2019, 2023-24). He is the first player to win back-to-back MVP awards since quarterback Aaron Rodgers (2020-21) and the sixth overall since the PFWA first awarded the honor for the 1966 season (running back Earl Campbell 1978-79, quarterback Bre...

SHREWSBURY, N.J. – The ECHL on Wednesday announced the Eastern Conference and Western Conference selections for the 2024-25 Midseason All-Star Team.   As a part of the All-Star selection,  DASH  - the Official Mobile Auction Platform of the ECHL - will auction off each player’s jersey. The auction is now live and will run through Wednesday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. ET. Visit the links below to place your bids.   ECHL Eastern Conference All-Star Jersey Auction   ECHL Western Conference All-Star Jersey Auction   The roster for the ECHL All-Stars was determined in a vote of coaches, team captains, media relations directors and broadcasters. The coaches were determined by the team with the highest points percentage in each conference through games of Jan. 5, 2025.   Eastern Conference All-Stars Western Conference All-Stars Goaltenders Goaltenders Cam Johnson, Florida Everblades Mark Sinclair, Bloomington Bison Sergei Murashov, Wheeling Nailers   ...