Race Car Stuff

The race is all over now. Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon, and Casey Mears won the race with a record distance of 734 laps around the Daytona track. The No. 60 Flight Options Lexus Riley of Oswaldo Negri Jr., Mark Patterson and Champ Car World Series teammates A.J. Allmendinger and Justin Wilson was second one lap behind.

The teammates of the winning car driven by Scott Pruett, Max Papis and Luis Diaz had alternator problem after the first hour. They went to the garage for repairs, but returned and worked their way back to the lead. But the engine failed shortly before daybreak dropping the car from the race to an eventual 39th place finish.

The car making the mark was the number 23 Porsche Crawford for Alex Job Racing/Emory Motorsports. Lucas Luhr started the car from the pole position, and Luhr and his fellow Porsche factory drivers Mike Rockenfeller and Patrick Long were certainly one of the race’s many powerhouse driver lineups. The car was forced to the garage for the first time in the race’s third hour with suspension problems, dropping seven laps off the pace and into 17th place overall. Once the car returned to the track, however, it was clear that the Porsche Crawford was the quickest race car on the circuit and the car began making up laps, finally taking advantage of the next to last lap flat tire of the number 58 Porsche Crawford of Darren Law, David Donohue and Sascha Maassen, to earn a Podium 3rd place finish.

In the GT class the No. 36 TPC Superchargers Porsche GT3 completed 691 of the 734 overall laps to take the GT class win in the Rolex 24 At Daytona for TPC Racing, a perfect start to the 13-race season for team owner/driver Michael Levitas and co-drivers Randy Pobst, Spencer Pumpelly and Ian Baas.

The Speedsource RX8 of Sylvan Tremblay, Jeff Altenburg and Haskell led in the early going, but seemed to suffer from new car development problems, resulting in an retirement from overheating.

For a full play by play of the race:

Race notes from the Rolex 24

My general thoughts of the race are that it was a great race, with a very close finish by 24-hour race standards. The teams decided the race. It could have very easily been one way or the other based on the work of the team and crews in the pits and garages.

More importantly the field of car and the crowd of spectators was the best in years if not since the start of the event. There was no pacing or sandbagging by any of the teams. The pace was constant with many teams running times equal to qualifying pace.