Daytona PCA Club race, October, 2009

I made it to Daytona for the first time to learn the track, hoping to run the 24 hour race someday, and get a feel for a new car. The car is one of only a handful of factory GT3 Cup cars made in 2008 for the Grand-Am Rolex GT class. This car was raced in 2008 by Leh Keen and Eric Lux and they won the event at Mid-Ohio in the rain. Check out the action in this youtube video of that wet race. The action with the 86 car starts just before the 4:00 mark.

When I got to Daytona, Spencer and the guys were set up in the garages and I had Kurt Keitel to work on my car. Kurt knew this car well and had worked on the Grand Am and ALMS team for Farnbacher-Loles since they started.

This was the first view of the car, pretty muscular. Kurt is behind the car.

Here are more pictures, I hope to get a page about the car up sometime in 2010.

The Grand Am guys had a good motto, put it on the rollbar. They also changed the "ADR" notation to the name of a guy who visited me at Analog Man several years ago, ADR OCK.

In Practice-1 I was 24th out of 40 cars, just coasting on the banking as it was very odd. I came in after a few laps to make sure the car was ok and went back out. I didn't know where the track went so I went slow. In the 2nd practice I knocked off 8 seconds and got to about the 2 minute mark, 9th overall. I started using the power on the straights. The car felt pretty good, it was much faster than the stock cup cars in the infield section due to better gearing. But the bus-stop (chicane) and 1st turn were pretty hard to learn so I was still losing a lot of time there. This picture is on the infield:
 

The weather was HOT!!!!! Luckily I brought my cool suit and tank and Kurt installed them, as it was about 115 on the track. In the third practice I pushed a bit more and got into the 1:58 range, 5th fastest. I was having trouble with speed in the chicane, the rear end was very loose. Here's a great shot in the chicane.
 

The last session on Friday was a 10 lap fun race, and I got up to 3rd with a 1:57, just behind my good friend and rival Chris Musante.

This looks like the start of the 1st race, I moved up a few spots from 7th (I WAS SEVENTH!!!!) to just behind Musante by the exit of the first turn. He let me by in the Chicane and I was in 5th place at the second lap. I then passed my GTC4 rival Kasey Kuhlman in lap 5 for 4th place, and Brady Reffening's 993 in lap 9 for 3rd place which I held to the end with a low 1:57 lap time as my best. The lap was a bit faster than Chris and Brady (or the other GTA2 car that finished in 2nd) so I would start ahead of them for the second race which was gridded by fast time in this race.

Rene Robichaud had been fastest all weekend in his similar looking but RSR powered (!) wide-body GT3 cup, and should have started on the pole but I think he arrived too late to grid, so I started on the pole! It's always great to start on the pole so I can dictate speed and pick a good gear and RPM to start out, and hopefully make it through the first turn still in first place. Here we are behind the Panamera pace car:

I held the lead for a while but after 9 laps, Rene caught me and blew by me for the lead. But I held onto 2nd and Chris 3rd. I got into the 1:56s in the race but Chris went even faster with a 1:55. The unbearable heat was taking a few seconds off our times I think but we all had to deal with it.

Sunday was a warmup for the Enduro. I got down into the low 1:56s but Spencer Cox in Ray Arthur's GTC4 car was fastest with a 1:55. I decided not to run the Enduro as it was still ridiculously hot and one of the decent used tires that we got mounted had a bad flat spot and was unuseable. So I watched the race for a while then drove to Daytona Beach and drove down the beach. I was glad to see that it's still legal to drive on the beach.

Hope to make it to Daytona again, there is a lot more time out there.