red burros racing: Donkeys Turned Thoroughbreds
Earlier this week, we caught up with Abel Santos, captain of Red Burros Racing, one of the standout teams from this year’s 24-Hours of Daytona. Leading perhaps one of the most captivating underdog stories in recent memory, it is with great pleasure that we announce Abel as our Driver of the Month for May 2026.
Our first contact with Red Burros Racing in their entirety came at last year’s 24-Hour race. A team full of relative unknowns on the British circuit arrived in their trademark camper van, carrying all the energy of a group of friends rather than a polished high-level endurance outfit. Unbeknownst to us, they were much more than a casual team there for the experience alone and, after a highly respectable P10 finish, they were certainly on our radar moving into the 2026 season.
Perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. To do this story justice, the natural starting point begins far from Milton Keynes. Originally from Portugal and now living in the Netherlands, Abel and his gang of fellow expats are connected by racing and a shared willingness to say yes to slightly ridiculous ideas. Red Burros Racing was not necessarily born at a track, nor were its members recruited by a racing mastermind after careful review of lap times and stylistic compatibility. The “Red Donkeys” came together over a barbecue, a few beers and a conversation that, somewhere along the way, turned into: why not enter the Daytona 24 Hour?
The name followed in much the same spirit. Red Burros was chosen as a joke and then simply stuck. It says plenty about the team. They are serious about racing, but not too serious about themselves. They came to Daytona as friends first, bringing with them the kind of humour and looseness that can so often disappear in competitive paddocks. Yet beneath that relaxed exterior was a group with genuine pace and as the result would prove, enough quality to trouble some of the most established endurance teams in the field.
This year marked Abel’s second time racing for Red Burros Racing at Daytona and only his second event in our signature DMAX racing karts – the fastest of their kind in the UK rental scene. Last year, the team finished tenth. This year, they finished third. That progression was not expected, at least not so quickly. Red Burros arrived with more experience than before, but also with the understanding that they were still learning the race. The Daytona 24-Hour is rarely won on pace alone. Pit stop discipline, fuel strategy, traffic management, yellow flag awareness and consistency all matter just as much as raw lap time. For a team still in the early stages of its endurance journey, getting all of those details right over twenty-four hours is a serious challenge.
Their race was made even harder before it had truly begun. A Qualifying penalty for being 2.5kg under the target weight left Red Burros starting five laps down, forcing them into recovery mode from the outset. For many teams, that could have defined the race before the lights had even gone out. For Red Burros, it became the first chapter of the comeback.
Across the opening hours and into the night, they began clawing the deficit back. By the time the race moved through its night stint and into the early hours, Red Burros had dragged themselves back into podium contention. It was not clean or easy. They received a black flag for speeding under yellow flags, and Abel is the first to admit that consistency and traffic management remain areas for improvement. But the pace was there, and so was the belief.
One of Abel’s own defining moments came in the early stages, when he found himself sharing the track with Brad Philpot of KBR, one of the benchmark teams in the race. It was a sharp introduction to the level required at the front. Abel felt the battle was aggressive, but it also underlined the reality of the competition Red Burros had entered. If they wanted to fight with the best, they had to stand their ground against the best.
KBR would ultimately prove why they remain so difficult to beat and why between them they have amassed almost every championship and endurance title Daytona have on offer. Their pace was strong, but their real edge came in the details. Pit lane execution, strategy and race management were all close to flawless. While Red Burros were losing around four and a half minutes in pit stops, KBR were closer to three. Over a race as long as the Daytona 24-Hour, those margins are not merely footnotes but the difference between the pack and the podium.
That, in many ways, makes their result even more impressive. This was not a perfect race. It was a race of recovery, adaptation and survival. Red Burros fought back from a five-lap deficit, overcame penalties, managed traffic, stretched strategy and still found themselves in the podium fight as the clock ticked down.
The final stint captured the team’s character perfectly. Abel chose not to take his last planned run, instead stepping back to focus on strategy and leave the quickest drivers in the kart during the decisive phase of the race. It was a captain’s decision rather than a driver’s one, and it paid off. By extending the run to the absolute limit, Red Burros saved crucial time on an additional stop, but it came with genuine jeopardy. They were so tight on fuel that they were not certain the podium was secure until the kart crossed the line. Pulling into the trophy ceremony on little more than fumes.
That moment, more than anything, summed up the entire Red Burros experience. A team formed by friends, named as a joke, racing thousands of miles from home, running on the edge of strategy, fuel and exhaustion, only realising at the flag that they had secured their first endurance podium together.
It would be easy to frame Abel as the most experienced figure in the group because he is the captain. In reality, he sees himself as one of the least experienced drivers in the team. His background is varied rather than conventional. He raced in university championships for three or four years and was involved with a university motorsport team, working with machinery ranging from road cars to competition cars. They built cars, developed them and raced them. But like many talented amateur racers, Abel’s progress was interrupted by time and money.
The rest of the Red Burros group continued racing more regularly, including in professional championships and Dutch racing series. Abel had to step away at points, but in the last year he has returned with renewed focus and made significant progress. That, perhaps, is why his role as captain makes sense. He is proactive, talkative and able to make things feel less daunting. He organises, encourages and gives the group structure without taking away the fun that brought them together in the first place.
The result at Daytona has changed the scale of the adventure. What began with a group of Portuguese friends deciding to enter a 24-Hour race has become something more serious. Last year was the starting point. This year brought the podium. Now, Red Burros are looking further afield, with plans to contest four 24-Hour races this year, including Daytona, the 24 Hours of Bulgaria in Sofia, a home race in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and a race in Morocco in November. Le Mans has been discussed too, perhaps for next year.
Daytona, though, is where the journey began. It is the race that turned the idea into something real, and the one that proved Red Burros could compete with established teams. Since the chequered flag, Abel and the team have spoken with drivers from Vertice and shared good conversations with KBR, the kind of paddock interactions that mark a team beginning to earn its place among the regular contenders.
For all the ambition, Abel is clear about what Red Burros Racing is really built on. They did not start the team to become world champions. They started it because they are friends, because they enjoy racing, and because they wanted to do something memorable together. Their identity is rooted in happiness, friendship and just enough strategy to make things dangerous.
That does not mean they lack competitive edge. Far from it. The podium has sharpened their appetite, and Abel is already thinking about what needs to improve. Pit stops must be cleaner. Consistency needs to be stronger. Traffic management has to become sharper. The foundations are there, but the next step will come from refining the details that separate podium finishers from race winners.
And they will be back. Red Burros Racing are already planning their return to the Daytona 24-Hour 2027, now with proof that they belong on the podium. The joke has become a serious team. The barbecue idea has become an international endurance programme. The Red Donkeys have become thoroughbreds.
For Abel Santos, we hope that Driver of the Month is recognition not only of his own performance, but of what he and the team represent: the ability to turn a casual idea into one of the most memorable stories of 24-Hour history. The Red Burros came to enjoy themselves. Next time, they may arrive expecting even more.
As Abel put it, it might be time for someone to dethrone the king.
