ROLEX 24 AT DAYTONA

January 25, 2026

Connor De Phillippi

Neil Verhagen

Dan Harper

Max Hesse

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: We have our GTD Pro winners, co-drivers of the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO from left to right Connor De Phillippi, Neil Verhagen, Dan Harper, and Max Hesse.

We'll go straight to questions.

Q. Dan, can you talk about the closing stint and how you sort of -- I think the pit work and short field there got you ahead of marrow and you were able to extend that advantage a little bit?

DAN HARPER: Yeah, I mean, the team throughout the whole race were doing a great job managing all the pit stops. The strategy was always good.

Yeah, we decided to go full push I think it was my second to last stint. I came out a good bit behind the three leaders, which at that time was the Manthey car, one of the Corvettes, and the Merc, so we decided to go full push behind them, cut the stint short to get enough fuel to get to the end, and just hope there was no yellow where those guys would stop and get fresher tires.

We took that gamble and it paid off. We got the track position, which to be honest for us this weekend has been really key. We've struggled when we've been behind those cars to get a move done. We've always sort of came close to getting it done and then maybe on the brakes or the infield section, they'd just gap us a little bit again.

It was crucial to get that track position for the last stint, and yeah, the boys pulled it off.

Q. The closing few hours were pretty frantic in GTD Pro with the Manthey car, the Corvette was in the mix, you guys as well. Do you think the racing was pretty fair? Just looking back at how the tail end of the season ended and last year in WeatherTech, do you think everything was sort of a little bit more fair from that side of things?

DAN HARPER: To be honest, this time I was on the good side of it all. I had my bad share of it last year, mainly down to myself, to be honest.

I seen one of the Corvettes got pushed off by a Ferrari at some stage on the grass. Thankfully was able to rejoin and he was still in the fight and still, I think, in the lead again after that.

So of course when there's a full course yellow so close to the end of this huge race, then everyone is going to get the elbows out a bit more than normal. But I think it was all within a very good reason, and I had some amazing battles out there with all the different manufacturers. I think it was pretty good.

Q. For Neil, you qualified the car on the pole. Obviously there was a technical infraction that put you to the back of the field. But the pace was there the whole race. It was clear and obvious. Talk about the pace of this BMW over the course of 24 hours?

NEIL VERHAGEN: Yeah, for sure. I think as we saw, the short run pace, we were able to dial it in. It took us a while to get there, but we had mainly focused on the long run pace. That's where we knew we were going to be able to make the difference on energy numbers as well as saving the tires.

That's what we focused on, and I think yeah, it paid off at the end. We were able to -- even without radio for Dan at the end, able to still make it at the end, which obviously is amazing for us. The three of us first Rolex win here, Connor for his second one year. It's an awesome feeling.

Can't thank Paul Miller Racing and BMW Motorsport enough. I mean, giving us the package to be able to pull this off after having a good look at it last year and falling a bit short for some circumstances.

But yeah, we were able to do it this year, and thrilled.

Q. For Dan or Neil, were you discouraged after the good qualifying effort, or did it just turn out to be a minor setback because it was a 24-hour race?

NEIL VERHAGEN: Yeah, I think if we were going to get disqualified from one, this one would be the best one to get it done for. Obviously we were a bit discouraged about losing the points in the qualifying, obviously, but in terms of the race itself, I think we saw through all the classes adversity, and then they were able to come back up, as well, too.

I don't think that we really felt that we were starting off on the wrong note or something like that by this. I think we just knew that we needed to work like a team, and that's what we did, and we pulled off a flawless race.