The annual tradition of pitting the country’s finest sports car drivers against the stars of Verizon IndyCar Series and other international championships continues this year at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

2014 Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay is among 17 current and recent drivers with IndyCar or Mazda Road To Indy experience that are set to compete in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship’s flagship event. At least a dozen more drivers with Indy car or open-wheel ladder experience from the 1990s and 2000s add to the entry list.

RHR is the lone driver from Andretti Autosport in the field, and he’ll have former KV Racing (and Formula 1 legend) Rubens Barrichello among his teammates in the No. 7 Starworks Motorsport DP. Starworks owner Peter Baron is often credited by RHR for rekindling his career after opportunities fell through in Champ Car. Drives for Baron in a Porsche GT car eventually led the way to bigger sports car deals, and before long, RHR was called up race in the IndyCar Series.

“Being back with Peter is amazing; he resurrected my career after my open-wheel career went sideways,” Hunter-Reay told RACER. “Driving with Rubens is going to be great; he’s a great person and someone you want to emulate.

“Daytona’s always the all-star race to begin the season, and it’s important to every driver out there based on its history, so having so many IndyCar guys to race against – even though we have our own team agendas – is a big part of the fun.”

2014 Toronto Round 1 race winner Sebastien Bourdais is back to defend his overall Rolex 24 victory in the No. 5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP. The Frenchman is teamed with CART IndyCar Series race winner Christian Fittipaldi and former Atlantic Championship standout Joao Barbosa.

A stockpile of IndyCar talent can be found within the Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates team. Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan, who won three races in 2014, and Charlie Kimball will drive for the Ford EcoBoost DP team, along with Sage Karam, who impressed everyone at last year’s Indy 500. Karam, the 2013 Indy Lights champion, is tipped to join his open-wheel teammates in a fourth Ganassi IndyCar entry this season.

Former Team Penske IndyCar driver AJ Allmendinger, who won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup race in 2014, is back with Michael Shank Racing in the No. 60 Ligier-Honda, and 2014 Indy Lights champion Gabby Chaves, who will drive once again for the DeltaWing Racing team, completes the list of drivers in the Prototype class.

In Prototype Challenge (PC), A.J. Foyt Racing’s Jack Hawksworth (LEFT, LAT photo) returns to RSR Racing in the No. 11 entry, and he’ll have Martin Plowman, who drove for Foyt at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and the Indy 500, to race against in the No. 61 Bar1 Motorsports entry. Former Indy Lights driver David Ostella, who turned his attention to sports cars in 2014, is back with Performance Tech Racing in the No. 38 PC.

The GT Le Mans category finds past and present Team Penske drivers Ryan Briscoe and Simon Pagenaud as teammates in the factory Corvette Racing program. Briscoe, who drove for Chip Ganassi last season, returns to the team in the No. 3 Corvette C7.R, and as RACER predicted last week, Pagenaud will join the Le Mans-winning team in the No. 4 C7.R. Pagenaud won twice for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports last year.

Graham Rahal has another date in one of the BMW Team RLL BMW Z4s, and will share the No. 24 BMW with 2009 Atlantic Championship winner John Edwards.

“Last year was definitely a challenge, and had it not been for a wheel bearing issue, we could have won,” said Rahal. “We have some good competition with Corvette – I’ve driven for them, did a 24-hour simulation for them and was offered a drive, and we know they’re the benchmark. And we have Porsche and some of the other manufacturers to contend with, but we also have great cars and great drivers, and I like our chances. I feel really good with the improvements we’ve made, the cars faster, and it should be a blast.”

Moving to GTD, a pair of 2014 Indy 500 drivers are expected to play a role in the outcome of the Rolex 24. Indy specialist and NBCSN IndyCar commentator Townsend Bell will pilot the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari F458, and he’ll have James Davison, who’s driven for Dale Coyne Racing and KV Racing since 2013, to contend with in the No. 007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin V12 Vantage.

 

Scott Pruett, Scott Sharp, Ryan Dalziel, Bruno Junqueira, Jon Fogarty, Katherine Legge, Joey Hand, Joel Miller, Oswaldo Negri Jr., Mike Guasch, Jan Magnussen, and Dane Cameron all hail from open-wheel racing, and some, like Sharp, Pruett and Junqueira, have everything from Indy car wins to championships on their résumé.

If having 17 IndyCar or MRTI drivers on the Rolex 24 grid wasn’t impressive enough, five of the 11 IndyCar drivers who won races last season will compete at Daytona, and those five accounted for half of the victories – nine of 18 races—on the schedule. Nine IndyCar Series or Champ Car titles have been won among those five (Bourdais, Dixon, Kanaan, RHR), and three Indy 500 victories have also been recorded (Dixon, Kanaan, RHR).​