Posted (02/09/2005) -
The Rolex 24 Hours At Daytona is the biggest weekend of the season. This year the race was one of the most star studded races in the history of the event. The list of big name drivers is too long for the space here, but the past three NASCAR champions, Paul Tracy, Sebastian Bourdais, the Labontes, Christiano da Matta, Paul Newman, were just a few of the non-sportscar racing stars in the race.
As for Phoenix ProMotions, the team our family owns, we headed to Daytona with eight cars. Five of them were Porsche 996s which we would run in the 200 mile Grand Am Cup Grand Sport race on Friday. Three were Porsche GT3 Cups, of which we would race two of them in the Grand American Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.
The weekend started on Wednesday as we unloaded our cars and set up our paddock. We recently partnered with Sahlen and with that partnership we will see all eight of our cars painted in Sahlen colors. Last year we ran two different sponsorship campaigns on our Grand Am Cup and Grand American Rolex cars, so all eight cars weren't painted alike. It was stunning to see all our cars that would race at Daytona in an identical paint scheme.
Thursday started official practice. Grand Am Cup went very smoothly. Our Porsches handled just as they did at test days. We were never even in the top ten in practice, but we were always testing on older tires with a full load of fuel. We were working on our race day set up, and the car was very well balanced.
Our Rolex Series practice wasn't going as smoothly. We brought three Porsche GT3 Cups to practice in the lead up to the Rolex 24 Hours At Daytona. Our plan was to run two of them and use the third as a test car so that all of our drivers, including us, could get track time. Thankfully we did bring the third car as the two primary cars had mechanical problems throughout the weekend. Will, Joe, and I all gave a lot of our track time up to the other six drivers so they could get comfortable in our cars.
Grand Am Cup qualifying didn't go quite as planned. The session was black flagged because of a wrecked Mustang ending the session early. We hadn't gotten a quick time in yet, so our best qualifying position was Joe with 21st place. Rolex qualifying was later that day. Unfortunately both of our primary cars were still having clutch problems.
By Thursday night we had gotten the #43 running smooth. The five drivers of the car (Ron Zitza, Brad Blum, Victor Gonzalez Jr, Eric Lux, and Wes Allen) were all happy with the car and comfortable with the track. Our ride, the #41, was still having problems shifting. Friday came around and the crew had taken apart the clutch pedal and put it back together. In the Friday's round of qualifying we ran a very competitive time with a full load of fuel and old tires, but the car started to have troubles shifting again by the end of the session.
While the crew contemplated of what to do to fix the #41 Rolex Porsche, we also prepared for the 200 mile Grand Am Cup race which ran later that afternoon. We were running five Porsches in the race. In addition to Joe and I in the #43, we also had Will and Joe Sahlen (#42), Joe Masessa and John Bisignano (#44), Eric Lux and Dave White (#40), and Yenoda Rakovchik and Gene Sigal (#41).
On the third lap of the race there was a large wreck on track. Joe slowed for the wreck and in doing so got hit from behind. After driving for a few turns Joe felt there was something mechanically wrong with the car. Playing it cautiously, Joe pitted so we could look the car over.
We worked the car back up through the pack. While our class was very competitive last year with over 30 cars a race, this year there were 45 cars in the Grand Sport class and 28 in the Sport Touring class. The 3.56 mile track was very full. Towards the end of the race we had worked our way up to third, despite a brake problem. As I drove the car the brakes got progressively worse. With five laps to go the pedal got stiff and<
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