How Kyle Kirkwood will drive two cars in the Rolex 24

Come 8:00am on the morning of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Kyle Kirkwood, driver for Vasser Sullivan Racing, will already be an hour and a half into his work day. The green flag won’t wave for almost six more hours.  It’s the same situation for the 230-plus drivers taking part in the fabled 24-hour race that runs across Saturday and Sunday: a 24-hour race, plus the rest of “race day.”

But for Kirkwood, it’s actually races, plural. He’ll be piloting both the Lexus team’s No. 14 GTD Pro and No. 12 GTD entries during the enduro. 

Coming into his sixth season in endurance racing, and fifth Rolex 24, Kirkwood’s logged plenty of time behind the wheels of both Lexus’ cars in IMSA races, even clinching a couple of wins with the team. During the Roar Before the 24, Kirkwood told Motorsport.com he was ready for this year’s challenge, even though he only got the call to take the wheel — sorry, wheels — a few weeks ago.

Dual driving comes with a lot of bonus complications, particularly o

“I mean, when you’re told two weeks before, there’s no preparation that can go into it. So you just need to be ready. You need to be ready for anything that this world can throw at you.” He says that driving will be the easy part. The hardest parts? Keeping track of drive time, and staying hydrated. 

Managing the clock

Drive time becomes tricky when you’re moving between two cars. Drivers in the IMSA series are subject to run a minimum amount of time over an endurance race. For Rolex, specifically, those minimum drive times are two hours for the Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD Pro) and Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) classes, and 4.5 hours for the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) and Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) classes. 

But there’s a caveat: a driver can only be behind the wheel for a maximum of four hours in any six-hour period — and those hours follow the driver, not the car. Strategically, the earlier a team can get their drivers to meet minimum times during a race, the easier it is to avoid driving penalties if anything happens. 

And the whole beauty of an endurance race like the Rolex 24 is that chaos is bound to show up. If, say,  Kirkwood were to get sick and only completes the drive time in one of the two Lexuses he’s driving, the other car will be disqualified. “It’s very, very important that I stay well enough to get through the minimum drive time,” he said. “So that’s really the brute of the first 12 hours for me.”

The #12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 Kyle Kirkwood will drive

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Which car is which?

Also tricky for Kirkwood’s two-car monte: making sure he’s in the right car at the right moment. The two Lexus RC Fs he’s driving look like twins: the No. 14 has red accents for GTD Pro, and the No. 12 has green accents for GTD. But the overall paint scheme — highlighter yellow over black — the interiors, and the silhouettes are the same. 

Here’s one scenario Kirkwood’s already working to prevent: “You could be coming in at some point and forget which car you [are in], and you pull into the wrong pit box,” he says. “So I’m already harping on the team to let me know, because I use literally the same insert — everything on the dash is the same. You can’t tell that you’re in a different car.

“The only thing that you can tell [is] different is that you’re talking to a different engineer. So it’s important for me to know — even after doing two hours, six hours, whatever, whatever it’s been — that they are reminding me which car I’m in and which car I’m getting ready to get in.”

Downtime isn’t a long time

When Kirkwood finally has the chance to get out of the car, scheduling will allow him a few hours of break time, but it dwindles quickly. Roughly 30 minutes are spent getting out of the car and debriefing with his engineer about the run. They’ll talk through exactly what happened, and what’s coming up for the next stint. 

Self-care comes after: eating, rehydrating. The hydration part is the key. With temperatures in Daytona expected to stay under 70 degrees (ambient), the cars should stay cooler in the cockpit. Anything warmer than that and keeping his body in proper working order gets hard.

“It’s hot inside the car,” says Kirkwood. “You’re at a high sustained heart rate for a long period of time. It’s very exerting when you’re in one of these cars — and when you’re doing it twice, you need to make sure that you’re constantly feeling yourself.”

After he refuels, Kirkwood has some time to relax. He always starts with a shower. 

The #14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 Kyle Kirkwood will pilot

Photo by: IMSA

“I take a shower after every single stint. It’s just nice to reset, go lay in bed, lay on the couch — whatever it might be. But you only really have about an hour of downtime after you add up all those things, because you have to be back at the stand an hour before you get back in the car.

Kirkwood’s also trying to remain Zen about what’s happening out on the track. 

“I did a good job of being able to wind down after a stint [last year] and have full trust in the drivers that are in the car,” he remembers. “I think that’s probably what gets guys the most — because you have somebody else driving a car that you’re driving. You’re curious to where we’re going to end up, if anything’s happened, if we’re leading, if we’re not leading. Those kind of [thoughts] just keep going through your mind, right? Being able to shut that off and have full trust in your team and your drivers is actually what allows you to relax between your stints.”

Nighttime means nothing

As the hours close in on midnight, with the cars running under the lights of Daytona International Speedway, the adrenaline keeps Kirkwood moving. Despite the high speeds and change in lighting, he says he’ll easily forget what time it is as he stays locked into the task at hand. 

“It’s more just keeping your focus [as] the big thing, and understanding that you probably are getting tired, even though you don’t notice that you’re getting tired,” says Kirkwood. “Some some reactionary stuff might slow down now that you’ve gone a long time without some rest.”

While the Rolex clock standing beside the pit lane, just before the exit, continues counting down, Kirkwood might attempt to catch a wink of sleep during a break. It’s difficult, even in the early hours of Sunday morning. If he is able to catch a nap, it might come in the 2:00am to 6:00am window, just before sunrise.

“As soon as the light comes up, you feel like you’re at the home stretch — even though there’s a long time to go when the light comes up,” says Kirkwood. “That’s kind of when everybody gets in the race mode and things start to happen on the race track. So you get a little bit more amped up when you start to see some sunlight in the morning.”

The final push

As the sun rises, Kirkwood will have cleared the first 12 hours of the race and stayed awake for 24 hours already (minus a few potential minutes of shuteye). His schedule may require another stint in one or both of the Lexus RC Fs. With the help of his engineers he’s successfully kept track of what car he’s in, and he’s kept up on his hydration. The team will be focused on pushing during those final hours to take the checkered flag at 1:40pm, while having completed the most distance. 

When the Lexuses make their final stop in the pits, it will have been 31 hours since Kirkwood last had a real night’s sleep. If either (or both) of his Vasser Sullivan Racing cars win their respective class, he’ll be part of celebrations, photos, and post-race interviews for another couple hours. The Rolex clock may have zeroed-out, but Kirkwood’s clock continues ticking.

And then, when Kirkwood’s finally done at Daytona International Speedway, he’ll catch a flight for California, where he’ll be doing IndyCar testing as the driver for Andretti Global’s No. 27 car. Maybe then, he says, he might finally get some rest.

Photos from the Friday of Daytona 24 Hours