Tudor Championship Announces Rolex 24 TV Schedule

The #93 Riley Motorsports Viper leads the #2 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-04a around the East Horseshoe during the IMSA TUSC Roar Before the 24, Jan. 10, 2015. These cars, and more than 50 others like them, will be racing in the Rolex 24 Jan. 24–25. Chris Jasurek/Epoch Timers

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—The Tudor United SportstCar Championship has good news for racing fans who can’t make it to the track for January’s season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona: fifteen hours of the race will be broadcast on television, and the rest available online.

The coverage starts at 2 p.m.ET on Saturday, Jan. 24 on regional Fox broadcast channels, so the start will reach every household in the nation which has a TV.

At 4 p.m. the action switches over to Fox Sports 2 for another four hours of coverage, before moving to Fox Sports 1 until 10 p.m.

The overnight hours, 10 p.m. until 7 a.m., will be streamed in high definition on IMSA.com (not geo-blocked, supposedly—everyone everywhere should have access.)

Even better news: the Radio Le Mans crew should be doing the overnight race call. Play-by-play (with occasional excited shouting) by John Hindhaugh, intricate expert analysis Paul Trusswell, hordes of special guests—the whole RLM team will help carry fans through the dark hours.

The RLM team will be doing audio on IMSA.com throughout the race, for those who want to watch on TV and listen via the Internet.

TV coverage resumes at 7 a.m. Sunday on Fox Sports 1 and continues until the checkered flag waves at 2:30 p.m.

All Fox coverage will also be streamed on the Fox Sports Go app for people who can’t reach a TV but still want to watch the race.

The high-speed banked portion of the Daytona International Speedway road circuit defines the course and often determines the winner of the race. The sustained high speed can also destroy a car. Chris jasurek/Epoch Times

Rolex 24 Broadcast Schedule:
2:00–4:00 p.m. ET 1/24/2015 Fox
4:00–8:00 p.m. ET 1/24/2015 Fox Sports 2
8:00–10:00 p.m. ET 1/25/2015 Fox Sports 1
10:00 p.m.–7 a..m. ET 1/25/2015 IMSA
7:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m. ET 1/25/2015 Fox Sports 1

The classic Corvette/Ferrari duel will play out over 24-hours at the Rolex. Chris Jasurek/Epoch Times

For Fox, devoting 15-plus hours of coverage to the Tudor Championship season opener is the result of two successful experiments at the close fo the 2014 season. Fox broadcast from Circuit of the Americas and Road Atlanta for the final two Tudor races of 2014 and attracted an average of one million viewers to each event, with peak viewership hitting two million.

These results proved to Fox that there very definitely is an audience for quality sports car racing in the United States, and Fox and the Tudor Championship have partnered up to satisfy that audience. With the addition of the Radio Le Mans commentary crew, TUSC and Fox aren’t missing a thing: great racing, great coverage, great commentary. North American sports car racing fans might (finally) get to see that Golden-Age resurgence of the sport which Tudor promised back in 2013 when the series was first announced.