Daytona has been good to Philip Ellis and Morgan Howard. In January 2026, Ellis won his third Rolex 24 at Daytona in the GTD class for Winward Racing, while a Porsche team Howard works with took the GTP victory in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963, marking Porsche’s third consecutive overall win. Both came away from Daytona with race victories this year, but they’d already claimed the bigger prize: finding each other at that same race in 2025.
During the 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona, when she finished hosting Porsche clients and customers in VIP suites at the speedway, Morgan opened Bumble and started swiping. She came across Philip’s profile around 10:30 PM. The profile said ‘race car driver’. Morgan had seen that before and knew it could mean anything from weekend track days to actual professional competition. She swiped right anyway because he was attractive, then clicked through to his Instagram to see if the racing claim held up. That’s when she realized Philip was driving the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 and was somewhere on the 3.56-mile road course at that moment.
They met on a golf cart in the paddock around 1 AM, between Philip’s driving stints and everything aligned between them in that first conversation.
Read their story in the spring issue of Speedwell Magazine
