Rolex 24 at Daytona

[Matt Harper]

First enduro of the season, over here in not so sunny FL tomorrow.
Was over at the Speedway yesterday. My employers son is driving the #41 Porsche GT3 Cup and they have qualified well (9th in GT), despite a bit of a dodgey clutch - which should be fixed this afternoon.
Daytona Prototype qualifying has been interesting, with Scott Pruett putting the CompUSA Lexus (#1) on the front of the grid. Brumos totalled their #29 Porsche Fabcar yesterday - but it was half-way rebuilt by the time I left last night. The #59 Brumos (Haywood, Rockenfeller, France, Bernhard and Dumas) and the #20 Pontiac Crawford (Wallace, Lammers and Tony Steward) will bring the fight to the #1 car. Racers Group Pontiac DP of Papis, Gavin and Bergmeister looked tough yesterday too.
Also noted a spirited qually session by the very rumblesome Pontiac GTO #23 and the sound of the wailing rotary Mazda RX8 - the all FL line-up of Goldin Bros Racing, as it ran through the tri-oval, put me in mind of Le Mans in the early 80's. very stirring stuff.
Daytona had more of a party look to it than my previous experience with the Rolex 24. It has sprouted a mini-fairground, complete with ferris wheel and puke inducing rides. The re-vamped infield (renamed Nextel Fan-Zone) makes Le Mans look like Rotherhythe Garbage Dump and of course - and I know thsi is a bit of a novelty these days - you actually get to see the cars - can wander around the garages at your leisure, chatting to teams and drivers, some of whom are quite famous. Thank God Fax was not there - they'd all be dead men walking! Spent a while  talking to Andy Wallace (really nice chap) Dario and Marino Franchetti and even nodded hello to Butch Cassidy.
Ticket pre-sales are higher than ever too - so with a wide and varied driver line-up, a 60 car grid, a bigger than usual crowd at one of the most spectacular facilities in the world - all we need is a bit of sunshine and it'll be a great weekend.
All the best
Matt  

[Fax]

Matt,
Sounds like it should be a better show than we've seen in recent years.  I still think the ISC people are c**ts though.  Say hi to the girls at Lollipops for me and take a piss with Mauro Baldi for old times sake.  I don't know if you noticed this about Dario Franchitti but he's one of the weirdest looking little f**k*rs I've ever seen.  Spoke to him at Mid-Ohio once, he'd just flown in on his new copter that Ashley bought him and was still in his civies. The guy's got short little legs and torso with a great big mellon on him, reminded me of a line from "So I Married an Axe Murderer" I wanted to say in a Scottish accent "Would you look at that head? Its got its own weather system!"
Have fun Matt, see you in March.
Fax

[Matt Harper]

Ah yes, Lollipops.... I suppose it would be rude not to stop by and pay our respects, after all, it does have the best CSR (customer to slut ratio) on the east coast.
Dario is indeed a strange looking dude. I believe the term is 'simian'. It's also quite bizarre listening to a guy who looks like he should be saying, "Cao, bene, bene...", instead of "Och, aye the noo".
Swarthy little f**k*r, nonetheless.
Shame you couldn't make it down for this one John - I know Rolex isn't what it was - but the driver and manufacturer line-up is pretty good this year. Should be an event-filled race - just hope the weather perks up a bit.  

[Dave H]

Now then Matthew.  You bastard.

I am sitting here freezing my conkers off ('though it's supposed to hit a blissful 52 degrees tomorrow!) and thinking that normally (03 and back) we'd be well on our way to being totally pissed in Orlando right now.  We'd already have had an "early night" planned and have probably got the Nigerian in by now (half of which we would drink when we got in from the pub).  But alas, we'd keep drinking, looking at previous race pictures and footage, looking at meaningless facts on the Internet and finally deciding that seeing as we're only going to get half an hour's sleep, it had better be wise to turn in.

I have full-on nightmare flashbacks of the year we went over on Friday night and waking up in the staging area for track entry on the Saturday a.m. around 4 a.m. sitting behind the wheel of our rented Camper, engine running and IN GEAR.  Having sat like that for at least an hour.  WTF?  I also remember meeting Pidgeon for the first time at that race and being unconscious in the stands at the start after swilling far too much Champers in the wee hours.  I believe that was the year Pidge was offeriing his meth amphet soaked orange slices.

I'll be thinking of you and the misery you'll be putting yourself through over the 24 hours!

Enjoy it man!

[Chris24]

Although i never really fancied the Daytona 24 Hours, this year, it looks like being a really good race. What has brought out the star drivers this year, have they said the winners will get 100 Rolex's each rather than the usual one !

Anyway, you lucky bastards in Florida make the best of it and have fun, I really wish I could be there with you.

Ah well, never mind, just another 5 weeks or so till Sebring which will make up for it.

Damn, I have been chasing Dario's autograph on a Team Green promo card for 4 years now. Just missed him at Sebring airport by 15 minutes in 2002.

He won't be at Sebring this year either, as it clashes with the first IRL race.

[Canada Phil]

Hi Matt,
            Enjoy Daytona. Even if the crowd is bigger they will all be related to the drivers and you will probably know half of them. Say Hi to all the ones I know
Hope the weather is warm for you.
Smokie LOLIPOPS is teh name to remember..... you remember OK
Canada Phil

[smokie]

Isn't Lollipops out of town somewhere? NOT walking distance? What's wrong with the Shark Lounge then?

Will research...

[Fax]

Hey Smoker,
Lollipops is in town, can't remember exactly where (we cabbed it there and back from Hooters) but it should be within stumbling distance.  Phil I'm with you when it comes to the Grand-Am series, mostly a bunch of crap.  To me its NASCAR's idea of what sportscar racinig should be.  One of the reason's they have such a big field is that the cars are so crude and dirt cheap to build and purchase.  Haven't had much interest in it since they ditched the LMP prototypes in favor of what are effectively spaceframe Group C2 cars.
I went to the Saturday night Grand-Am race at Mid-Ohio last August and I'm pretty certain that team members outnumbered the paying spectators.  Chris, one of the reasons they get so many star drivers down there for the Rolex is because its the kickoff to speedweeks and there's a fair amount of media coverage hanging around.
Fax

[Matt Harper]

Jeeeezus! What a bizarre experience that was!
Doing a 24 hour enduro - and being closely attached to one of the competing teams (Phoenix Promotions, Team Sahlen's 911 GT3 Cup #41) made things surreally different.
In years past we've either rented a regular RV or taken the truck. This year we were accommodated in a palatial Prevost motor-coach. $1.5m (I sh*t you not) worth of granite floor, 42" plasma TV, fridge bigger than mine at home, pull-out grill, exterior TV, full en-suite - the lot. It was ri-frickin'-diculous.
James' dad bought him the ride in one of Phoenix's 'customer cars', but his FRenault and other open-wheel experience had him fastest of all of their drivers, so they shifted him into the 'family' car of Joe, Will and Wayne Nonnamaker (Joe owns Phoenix).
Watching a 24 hour race from the pits isn't much fun - all the focus is on the telemetry - and there's no beer in there - so I tried to keep that to a minimum. They were running 1.5 hour stints and James did his first at 6.00pm and had the Porsche leading GT by the end of his session - not bad for a 17 year old kid. The team thought he was the sh*t and Speed Channel interviewed him as soon as he got out of the car.
I then commenced my usual trick of sustained heavy drinking until his next shift (midnight). At 1.00am James relayed a somewhat un-nerving message "Contact with a DP". It transpired that the Kodak/Bell Pontiac Doran had spun infront of him in turn 1 and he'd collected it rather than run into the pitlane guard rail.
He limped it back to the pit - the reaction of the team when he pulled in was one of disappointment (understandable) and downright hostility (not fair, considering it was a racing incident in it's truest sense).
The car was dragged back to the garage and 3 hours work started knocking it back into shape (oil cooler, radiator, cowl - and pulling out the front crossmember). By the time the car was fit to go back on track, it was 90 laps behind. The main problem was that the team owners didn't really want to let the lad back in the car (even though his father was effectively financing their outing). As you can imagine, it all got nasty and unnecessary - luckily I was so hammered it didn't really spoil my enjoyment of proceedings. James was eventually let back in the car around 8.00am and got them back another 9 places in his last stint.
The car eventually finished 32nd (17th in GT) - but it was a bit of an ill-tempered event for half it's duration.
I suspect that this is a team of weekend warriors, who do one big race each year and perhaps don't have the same philosophy as a more professional team.
Interesting to see it from the competitors perspective though.
Next up is Daytona 500 (Yeeee-Haaaaw!) - then Bike Week - then Sebring. I am indeed a lucky twat.
Matt

[Canada Phil]

Hi Matt,
            Well done. Weather looked good on TV. Did the Porsches have to run on those dreadful Hoosier tires?OK I am up for Bike week well Fridayy and Saturday anyway
Canada Phil

[Matt Harper]

Hi Phil
Everyone was on Hoosiers - presumably GrandAm's mandated tire...?

[Rhino]

What is the point of Daytona prototypes?
They just don't look right.
What would you prefer, an Aston v Corvette v Ferrari v Maserati v Porche.
Or some strange looking prototypes which need the Porche's slowed down to win.
Let's face it if a manufacturer is involved the costs will always go up.
Long live the GT's

[Fax]

Hi Rhino,
Couldn't agree more.  A few years ago Doran Racing had a open house for the local chapter of the Porsche Club of North America and in the preparation bay sat both of their lovely Dallara-Judd LMP's.  One fully assembled the other (the Daytona winner) all stripped down.  Just beautiful, high tech composite kit. Then they took us back to the fabrication shop and there sat a pile of welded steel tubes, I asked the guy if they were building NASCAR frames and he replied no...thats our new Daytona prototype! It was all I could do to stifle a laugh.  He didn't seem too thrilled to be building these things but as a constructor of customer cars figured they could sell a bunch of them.  To me the Daytona prototypes are ugly, slow and pointless.  As you said, just make it a race for GT's.
Fax

[chop456]

 Phil I'm with you when it comes to the Grand-Am series, mostly a bunch of crap.  To me its NASCAR's idea of what sportscar racinig should be.  One of the reason's they have such a big field is that the cars are so crude and dirt cheap to build and purchase.  Haven't had much interest in it since they ditched the LMP prototypes in favor of what are effectively spaceframe Group C2 cars.

Holy thread bump!

If anyone needed more evidence that the Daytona Prototypes have more in common with washing machines than proper race cars, I give you....

Qualifying Times - Miller Motorsports Park -  Tooele, Utah

Series Driver Car Pole Lap Time

ALMS P1 Frank Biela Audi R10 2:21.553
ALMS GT1 - Tomas Enge Aston Martin DBR9 2:34.953
Grand-Am Daytona Prototype - Scott Pruett Riley Lexus 2:37.998

 

They should fold that class up and go home.

Seriously.

[rcutler]

LOL,

When I was at Rockingham there was the SSCA racing that was no fun to watch and yet the British GT's were there but no one seemed interested the race of the BGT's?