56th Rolex 24 at Daytona

Doc Austin said:
This is a little bit rich considering it was Neilson who rammed Helio into the gravel at the Petite and put them so far back they could never recover from a race they really should have won.
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I think that was Matteo Cressoni. And JPM helped total a Lexus that race, so there's a lot they can learn patience-wise going forward especially in the enduros. I don't know if there's anything on what happened between Helio and Nasr but that's probably a case of the same. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't wreck in the first hour with how frantic those battles were.
 
I was happy to see cars on the track. I had to review the car classes (I haven't followed sports cars for awhile). I was impressed with the prototype car count. I didn't notice any American cars were in the Daytona class. The LM class seems to be a manufacturer class.

I remember watching the whole thing one year when SpeedTV covered it. I remember at about 3am they interviewed Boris Said, he was funny and after saying some things that wouldn't be allowed on TV these days he commented that no one was watching anyway at 3am - I was amused.
 
FLRacingFan said:
I think that was Matteo Cressoni.
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I'm pretty sire it was Nielson, but I've been wrong before.

And JPM helped total a Lexus that race, so there's a lot they can learn patience-wise going forward especially in the enduros.
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When he took out that GT car on the straight? Yeah, he kind of lost his mind a little bit there. JPM has won enduros before so he knew better than to throw the race away like that, especially after all they have come back from.

I don't know if there's anything on what happened between Helio and Nasr but that's probably a case of the same.
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I have not seen it all yet, but Racer says those two got into each other and that's what damaged Helio's car so much. Like, those two guys know better too, and there was still a long way to go.

Hell, I'm surprised they didn't wreck in the first hour with how frantic those battles were.
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Instead of the usual 10 car battle, this time it was 20, so no way was it going to be anything but bare knuckles. It was kind of hectic but what I have seen so far has been pretty entertaining.
 
Zerkfitting said:
I remember watching the whole thing one year when SpeedTV covered it. I remember at about 3am they interviewed Boris Said, he was funny and after saying some things that wouldn't be allowed on TV these days he commented that no one was watching anyway at 3am - I was amused.
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One year at Sebring Hans Stuck said " We have been balls out since the start. Oh, wait, I can't say balls out of television, can I?"
 
That was a decent event what bits and pieces I saw. I tend
to like a little more drama but I think they set a new distance record
so that is cool. Pruett managed one last "hi to my family at home " so
check that off the to do list. Now for the 6 or 7 week break before
Sebring, uggh.
 
Scott had two "Hi to my family at home". One was during the pre-race, with his family standing right beside him! The other was around the 21-hour mark, when speculating if he'd get back in for the final shift.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
Scott had two "Hi to my family at home". One was during the pre-race, with his family standing right beside him! The other was around the 21-hour mark, when speculating if he'd get back in for the final shift.
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Oh that's funny. I saw the latter live.
 
Amazing they had a field of such diverse ability, and classes with such a huge speed differential, and yet they only had four short cautions. There's usually a lot to go wrong when you mix fast cars with slow ones and professional drivers with gentlemen, but we had a reasonably (actually much better than reasonably) clean race. I don't have an answer for why it worked out that way, but it was nice to see the cars go fast the entire way and not stacked up behind the safety car.

Someone mentioned the sustained hard racing is what led to so much attrition, but endurance racing, except for the Audi years forward, has always been about attrition. I'm actually glad we have gotten back to having a little bit of that. I took a short snooze and woke up to a totally different race, just like the times I have actually been there. You wake up and a lot of the important players are gone, and cars that were down and out are back in the fight.

Technology and metallurgy have improved so much that stuff rarely comes apart any more. Motors used to sling rods and tag valves all the time, but I don't believe we have ever seen a 4.2 Gibson blow up. Maybe we had one Cadillac blow up last year, and occasionally a Mazda will burst into flames, but reliability on all of these cars has been really good, much improved over the old days.

You have a better race when all the major players are around at the end to fight it out, but a race with lots of twists and turns is always interesting too. The thing about endurance racing, especially with these DPI/P2 cars, is that just about no matter which way it goes, it's always interesting.

This Rolex was not a nail biting thriller down to the last second, but the series is so good that we may have forgotten every single race can't be one for the ages. We have had so many good Roles 24s that we have gotten a bit spoiled and expect an epic race every time, but no sport can deliver every single time. Look at how many lopsided super bowls we have had, or how many super fights have ended in the first round, or just been boring.

This year was a really good Rolex, but it's going to be lost in history to races like Lemans two years ago when the leading Toyota blew up on the last lap. You just can't get an ending like that every time, and occasionally you get a race that just sort of finishes itself out with a whimper. The Rolex was at least a little bit thrilling because we did not know if the lead Cadillac was going to blow up or not. That, and the second Cadillac was overheating a little bit too. We could have very easily seen the privateer Core autosports car win their very first start in DPI! Give that a try in Indycar or Nascar. It just can't be done any more, but Core came close because we have a sensible and competitive rules package.

In the end, not the best endurance race ever, but still jolly good. We had a very impressive prototype field for the first time in a lot of years, and WEC is looking really solid too. It's a good time to be a sportscar fan.
 
Doc Austin said:
Amazing they had a field of such diverse ability, and classes with such a huge speed differential, and yet they only had four short cautions. There's usually a lot to go wrong when you mix fast cars with slow ones and professional drivers with gentlemen, but we had a reasonably (actually much better than reasonably) clean race. I don't have an answer for why it worked out that way, but it was nice to see the cars go fast the entire way and not stacked up behind the safety car.

Someone mentioned the sustained hard racing is what led to so much attrition, but endurance racing, except for the Audi years forward, has always been about attrition. I'm actually glad we have gotten back to having a little bit of that. I took a short snooze and woke up to a totally different race, just like the times I have actually been there. You wake up and a lot of the important players are gone, and cars that were down and out are back in the fight.

Technology and metallurgy have improved so much that stuff rarely comes apart any more. Motors used to sling rods and tag valves all the time, but I don't believe we have ever seen a 4.2 Gibson blow up. Maybe we had one Cadillac blow up last year, and occasionally a Mazda will burst into flames, but reliability on all of these cars has been really good, much improved over the old days.

You have a better race when all the major players are around at the end to fight it out, but a race with lots of twists and turns is always interesting too. The thing about endurance racing, especially with these DPI/P2 cars, is that just about no matter which way it goes, it's always interesting.

This Rolex was not a nail biting thriller down to the last second, but the series is so good that we may have forgotten every single race can't be one for the ages. We have had so many good Roles 24s that we have gotten a bit spoiled and expect an epic race every time, but no sport can deliver every single time. Look at how many lopsided super bowls we have had, or how many super fights have ended in the first round, or just been boring.

This year was a really good Rolex, but it's going to be lost in history to races like Lemans two years ago when the leading Toyota blew up on the last lap. You just can't get an ending like that every time, and occasionally you get a race that just sort of finishes itself out with a whimper. The Rolex was at least a little bit thrilling because we did not know if the lead Cadillac was going to blow up or not. That, and the second Cadillac was overheating a little bit too. We could have very easily seen the privateer Core autosports car win their very first start in DPI! Give that a try in Indycar or Nascar. It just can't be done any more, but Core came close because we have a sensible and competitive rules package.

In the end, not the best endurance race ever, but still jolly good. We had a very impressive prototype field for the first time in a lot of years, and WEC is looking really solid too. It's a good time to be a sportscar fan.
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I think it was a combination of several things. The PC cars were terrible to drive, so those who moved to other classes (Performance Tech, BAR1, CORE if you exclude their one year in GTD) had better stuff to work with. The grid was slightly smaller, down to 50 from 55 a year ago, so less traffic. The overall grid quality was up though; very few real wankers out there. And I think IMSA also let incidents clean themselves up more rather than having a quick trigger finger.

Beyond the distance record being shattered, there were a few other notables - the first retirement (#90 SoD Cadillac) wasn't until 8:39 into the race, the longest that's ever elapsed before the first dropout. Probably the biggest surprise though, is that this was the first time ever at Daytona that Porsche didn't put a car on a class podium. Wow.
 
Wonder what they would have been if they hadn't jacked the coverage in the first place uh duh

"It's always tough to do an apples-to-apples comparison for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, as it plays across multiple platforms that rarely remain the same year to year," said Erik Arneson, FOX Sports VP Media Relations. "That said, in addition to major increases with our streaming audiences, we are very happy with the number of hours we were able to move to FS1 this year ... and despite some viewership erosion in a few of the time slots, overall television viewership of the Rolex was up by more than 20 percent."
 
It's just annoying when the race keeps jumping from channel to channel. Of course, it's hard to complain because I remember when you couldn't get it at all. I remember listening to the Indianapolis 500 on the radio because that's all we could get!

I believe Jackie Chan is going to Sebring, so we will have 18 cars. After 20 that's disappointing, but it's still really good. I can't believe we won't pick up another car or two before the year is out. As long as IMSA keeps the European spec customer car competitive, people can buy a car and race to win. That's how you build and maintain a big grid of swoopy looking prototypes.
 
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