fifty cars were officially entered for the 24 hours of daytona with the bulk of entries in the prototype and grand touring daytona (gtd) categories. the 2017 race winner, wayne taylor racing, returned to defend their title. three existing teams, action express racing, spirit of daytona racing and extreme speed motorsports, each fielded two daytona prototype international (dpi) cars called cadillac dpi-v.r and nissan onroak dpi. wayne taylor sent a solitary cadillac dpi-v.r chassis to the race. penske racing made their full-time sports car racing competition comeback for the first time since the 2009 rolex sports car series. they fielded a pair of honda-powered acura arx-05 dpis for 2018. mazda returned to sports car racing after withdrawing with three races left in the 2017 season so their duo of rt24-ps could be re-engineered by german outfit team joest. they were joined by ten global-specification le mans prototype 2 (lmp2) cars, represented by three out of the four major chassis: six oreca 07s entered by jdc-miller motorsports, jackie chan dcr jota (two each), performance tech motorsports, core autosport (one each). a trio of ligier js p217s utilised by pr1/mathiasen motorsports (one) and united autosports (two), and one riley mk. 30 from bar1 motorsports.