[6.40 p.m. ET ] ANOTHER SUBTRACTION…
Brent O’Neill and his Performance Tech Motorsports team is another scratch from testing at Daytona after driver Jerome Mee crashed the No. 38 PC entry at the Bus Stop and incurred enough damage to force the team to end their participation in the Roar and affect repairs at their shop. O’Neill told RACER they’ll have no problem getting ready for the Rolex 24.
…AND AN ADDITION
The Turner has landed. Turner Motorsport [ABOVE] moved into the paddock late this afternoon, despite telling RACER on Monday they planned to skip the event. It’s believed IMSA, needing Balance of Performance data from all cars planning to race in the Rolex 24, strongly encouraged the team to bring the lone GTD BMW Z4 to Daytona to help in the data gathering process. With rain possible for Sunday, and the team’s pro drivers busy with other obligations, it’s unclear whether the series will be able to capture everything they’re hoping to have.
[3:25 p.m. ET] SHRINKING PADDOCK
New DeltaWing driver Memo Rojas spun the DWC13 between Turn4 and 5 during the second practice session and make decent contact with the left side of the car. The damage is repairable at the track, but as team manager Time Keene told me, “We’ve already learned a lot, we weren’t planning to run tomorrow, and to go back out, we’d have to use up a lot of our spares for the race so we’ll cut things short.”
Rojas was directly behind the No. 50 Highway to Help Riley-BMW that crashed in the morning session, and was hit by debris coming off the DP. Fixed were made between sessions, but it’s believed the impact to some of the DeltaWing’s critical aerodynamic pieces was more significant than anyone realized. Rojas said the car felt like it lost downforce and grip, which then prompted the spin.
The Kevin Doran-led Highway to Help team packed up and left immediately after driver Byron DeFoor crashed and flipped in Turn 1.
“The car will to go Riley (for repairs), then back to Doran,” said Dorsey Schroeder, who came out of retirement to share the No. 50 and said the crash was caused by a right rear tire failure. “We will race.”
The No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari F458 GTLM entry was crashed by Francois Perrodo during the morning session, and took a big hit to the left rear corner. It took the team 15 minutes to get the smashed LR wheel off the Prancing Horse, and after stripping down the rear to inspect the damage, the frame was found to be twisted. It’s headed to Ferrari of St. Lauderdale to have chassis repairs made ahead of the race.
TRG-AMR’s replacement No. 007 V12 Vantage was on the ground late this afternoon and could appear on track sometime soon.
[2:11 p.m. ET] PIGOT INTERESTED IN ROLEX 24
Defending Pro Mazda champion Spencer Pigot is among those who would love to race at the Rolex 24, and the young Californian told me he hopes to build a name in the TUDOR Championship to complement his status as a rising star in open-wheel.
“I would love to be in a sports car for the long-distance races,” said the Gold-rated 21-year-old. “A prototype would be ideal because that’s more similar to what I’ll be racing this year in Indy Lights.”
Pigot pulled double duty last season, racing a Porsche GT3 Cup car in the IMSA series as well as competing in Pro Mazda. Stepping into any of the TUDOR Championship’s four classes wouldn’t be a stretch for a driver with Pigot’s potential.
“I did the whole championship with Alegra, we won some races and finished on the podium a bunch,” he explained. “I had a lot of fun driving the Porsche, and that’s where I really learned to love sports cars think they are great races and it’s great to be a part of them.”
[12:00 p.m. ET] HIGH-LOW FOR MSR JS P2
The learning process for Michael Shank Racing with its new Ligier JS P2 coupe continues. The team spent the first session on Friday running the car’s standard downforce package, setting a 1:39.656, then switched to its bare carbon-fiber Le Mans low-downforce kit in the afternoon and improved to a 1:39.517 while learning its tuning needs.
Saturday morning, the low-downforce kit helped MSR to set the second-fastest lap of the session with a 1:39.342.
“One has a lot more downforce than the other,” driver Ozz Negri told RACER. “When I ran yesterday with it – you can brake so much later. There is no limit – you can just keep going deeper, deeper, and deeper until you are brave enough to stop braking deeper. In the corners like the bus stop, it’s just a lot quicker. The good thing is that with the Le Mans aero kit the actual balance of the car is pretty good. It was the same balance, we didn’t pick up understeer or oversteer. It’s just a lot less downforce – a lot lighter, so on the brakes the car is moving a little bit more.”
[10:35 a.m. ET] RAYHALL HUNTING FOR A RIDE
Sean Rayhall was one of the TUDOR Championship’s revelations last season. He won twice for 8Star Motorsports in PC, yet with the teams funding in a state of flux, the Georgia native is one of many logging more miles on his shoes than in a racecar at the Roar.
Teams with openings for a Gold-rated driver have a proven commodity like Rayhall’s to consider for the Jan. 23-25 event and the rest of the season.
“At this point most of the PC deals are sewn up for the year,” he told RACER. “I’m working on deals everywhere, whether it is TUDOR, WEC, Continental Tire Challenge…I’m pushing hard.
“I’ve driven enough different cars where I’m just not labeling just the PC class as an option. I could be in a GT car; I can do fine in that, and I can do fine in a Daytona Prototype or LMP2 car. I’m looking everywhere for my options and working really hard on 2016 already. It might be a rough start to my 2015 season but I think you’ll see me back in a seat here soon. I’d obviously like to help someone win the Daytona 24 Hour, first.”
DELTA DRAGSTER
How’s this for a fun statistic: The DeltaWing DWC13 (RIGHT) recorded the six fastest trap speeds on Friday, peaking at 194.342mph!
In fact, 26 of the 30 fastest trap speeds belonged to the No. 0 DeltaWing. That, friends, is damn impressive.
Their closest rival, the No. 02 Chip Ganassi Ford DP, reached 193.424mph. Among the P2s, Michael Shank Racing’s No. 60 Ligier JS P2-Honda led the carbon fiber coupes at 189.394.
Behind the Prototypes, the fastest car went to Konrad Motorsport’s no. 28 Porsche 911 GT America at 183.038. BMW was best among GTLM cars—its No. 25 Z4 went 181.014, and the top PC spent was recorded by the No. 16 Bar1 Motorsports entry at 177.866.
OVERNIGHT REPAIR FOR TRG-AMR
Danish driver Christoffer Nygaard wholloped the cement barriers at the Bus Stop during the second practice session and did enough damage to the No. 007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin V12 Vantage to necessitate replacing the chassis.
If you’re looking for candidates to present the “Worst way to start off the season” award, killing a production-based GT chassis on Day 1 of the Roar Before the 24 might be hard to beat.
“We got a special dispensation from the track to stay overnight and get a spare car ready,” team owner Kevin Buckler told RACER. “We have to move everything that can be saved over to the new car, and our boys have a big job in front of them but they’ll get it done for tomorrow. [Nygaard’s] a rookie here, he made a small mistake, and he paid the price for it.”
The TRG-AMR crew worked throughout the night, got the car close to done, and have more to do when they return from a brief spell this morning.
DIRTBAGGING
I’m not sure what to call a slightly lesser version of sandbagging, but that’s what we witnessed in the Prototype category on Friday. Some fast times were set by teams that admitted they weren’t wringing the necks of their respective cars, while others maintained they were on the limit at all times.
The art of leaving a few tenths of a second on the table is nothing new during the Roar, and despite renewed threats from IMSA to penalize any teams that show a big improvement during the race weekend, it’s hard to police shaving a fraction of a second off of laps run in testing. As long as it isn’t blatant on the stopwatch, or something easily identifiable in the data, IMSA will have a hard time calling out any offenders.
It’s an old game, and as Action Express Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais told me Friday night, there are clear pros and cons to the practice.
“Our philosophy has been to try as hard as you can; that’s what we’re asked to do and so that’s what we do. We didn’t set the world on fire, but we were fast in testing, we were fast in the race, and we won. There was no surprise. Some of the other guys in the class complained, and we got BoP changes after Daytona.
“You can tell the P2s are quick this year; they’re as fast as anybody in the infield, and then on the banking, it’s like you’re passing them 20 miles an hour faster. It’s odd, let’s say it like that… Let’s be honest: Ganassi, at the end of the race last year when they turned it up, they were as fast as us. The last stint in the car, I couldn’t pass [Tony Kanaan], and they were the loudest about how they couldn’t compete with us before the race.
“Then we got BoP changes, they got breaks, and that’s how it went. They should be fast here with all the breaks they’ve received. We’ll see what comes out of it. It’s difficult for the series to grasp everything—who’s playing the game…they have the toughest job.”
PHOTO GALLERY FUN
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BIG DIESEL
Mazda’s humble start to its two-car Prototype program at last year’s Roar is a distant memory.
Torque from the bi-turbodiesel SKYACTIV engine gave both cars plenty of grunt off the corners, but with limited peak horsepower at their disposal, the Soul Red Mazdas were woefully slow on the banking—well below the rest of the field. Top speeds in the 164mph range were the norm at the Roar, and one year later, they hit 182.223 on Friday…it’s a giant improvement in that category alone, and their lap times have also seen a giant spike.
Friday 2014 saw a best lap of 1:51.5 go into the books, and by the end of the test—and multiple engine replacements—the time was brought down to a 1:48.8. The No. 07 Mazda lapped at a 1:42.7 yesterday, marking a year-to-year drop of 6.1 seconds.
That’s still 3.3 seconds shy of the best turned in by the Ganassi-Ford DP, but the gap is now manageable.
“We had a great day,” said SpeedSource team owner/driver Sylvain Tremblay. “The best thing is, we just did lap after lap all day, no issues, and worked on setup. No engine issues—everything went perfectly smooth, and that shows how far this Mazda program has come. We can concentrate on speed, and speed alone.”
MOTEGI RISI
The No. 62 Risi Ferrari F458 GTLM entry will sample Motegi’s wheels during the first practice session—they believe as much as one-pound of unsprung weight and rotating mass could be eliminated as a result.
THE NAME GAME
Two Prototype teams have ditched their 2014 names in favor of sponsor-friendly monikers. The artist formerly known as Spirit of Daytona has become VisitFlorida.com Racing in deference to the Corvette DP team’s title sponsor, and the assemblage of staff that previously represented Extreme Speed Motorsports bears new Tequila Patron ESM identification.
We’ve also had fun giving nicknames to a few new cars, including Mike Shank’s Ligier, which I’ve dubbed Gold Member in honor of its livery and, well, an ongoing, childish love for Austin Powers movies. Honda’s new HPD ARX-04b, which appears to have its cheeks stuffed when viewed from the front, is the Chipmunk.
Some smart folks on Twitter have determined the newly all-white DeltaWing looks like a Storm Trooper, and I’m sure there are other cars that deserve fan-generated nicknames…
TESTING TRISTAN
2013 Verizon IndyCar Series rookie of the year Tristan Vautier has quickly become a popular option among some of the PC teams at the Roar. The Frenchman spent a portion of Friday in the No. 38 Performance Tech car to help test and evaluate its performance, and he’ll move over one garage stall today to help JDC/Miller Motorsports with their No. 85 PC.
“I’d like to race, obviously, so I hope something good happens for me after the test,” Vautier said.
FORD ENGINE AND PACKAGING IMPROVEMENTS
IMSA’s changes to Daytona Prototypes last season gave the tube-frame cars more power, a lot more downforce, and much better braking capabilities.
As much as those changes helped DPs to become the dominant car of choice in the Prototype class, the move also highlighted other areas within the DP concept that begged to be optimized—brought up to a similar state of performance.
Ford Racing and their partners at Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates took the challenge to heart in 2014, and worked tirelessly on turning the Ford EcoBoost twin-turbo V6 engine and all of its systems into less of a Sumo wrestler and more of a MMA lightweight.
With the rest of the car operating at a high level, reducing weight within the engine bay—and thereby improving the Ford EcoBoost DP’s weight distribution—is now making a world of difference, as Friday’s lap times demonstrated.
“Everybody understands what a pendulum does,” said Ganassi managing director Mike Hull. “Everybody understands that the more weight you add to the pendulum, to the far end of the pendulum, the mass that you add makes it harder to control or harder to stop or harder to start.
“It’s a matter of understanding that the mass property of the engine and the engine accessory package is going to be a certain amount of weight. It is really important then to understand how much of that you can move into an advantageous position for weight distribution with the chassis between the axle lines. That is really what you try to do with any racecar, and we’ve now had the time to address this in our sports car.”
The No. 01 Ganassi-Ford chassis is more nimble than it has ever been, and with a car that handles more consistently from track to track, greater success should be possible for the team.
“It’s a big task; I tell people it usually takes two to three years to get a new program ready for a championship—the ability to contend for one, at least,” Hull noted. “Compared to the TRD Lexus project, and the BMW package which used normally aspirated V8s, they were very simple installation to what we are now doing. It was more plug-n-play.
“What we are now doing with the V6 engine with a turbocharged package is it takes a lot more moving parts to do what it needs to do. Those moving parts weigh more, even though it’s two less cylinders than the V8s, the package itself is probably not any lighter. The whole point is to try to get the weight for all the accessory package that runs the turbos, which is related primarily to the exhaust system, as low on the car as you can get it. It’s just a bit more difficult. The engine bay is definitely busy by comparison, but that’s the challenge we’ve accepted.”
BEN’S IN A BETTER PLACE
Viper Exchange team owner/driver Ben Keating is absent from Daytona this weekend, and while he might have missed seeing both of his GTD Dodge Vipers end Friday by running 1-2 in class, he’s not wanting for beautiful scenery, thanks to being on a African Safari trip that had been planned well in advance of the Roar, which is being held one week later than usual this year.
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