Yahoo Autos The Challenge of a 24 Hour Race at Daytona
After a great Christmas back in the English countryside, it was fantastic to be heading off to Florida and the Daytona "Roar" test so early in 2017. This is the first year in my career that I have driven a racecar in January and it was nice to get going again so soon. I was absolutely delighted when Ford announced they would field the full Ford Chip Ganassi Racing contingent at Daytona, where I would be making my IMSA debut.
The Roar test went well. Since it was my first time driving at the incredible Daytona International Speedway it was a great opportunity to get up to speed before the Rolex 24 race itself. A lot of people told me it was an "easy" track and that may well be the case when you have completed five or six Daytona 24s plus testing. Nevertheless I left there after three days at the Roar feeling like we had a good race car for the Rolex and the timesheets certainly backed that up.
I had Andy Priaulx in the #69 as normal but the Roar was the first time I met my second team-mate for the race, Tony Kanaan. What he lacks in height he makes up for in character and he fit straight into the team-and Andy's seat insert (!)-while on track he was up to speed in just a few laps. With a three-time World Touring Car Champion [Andy], an Indy 500 race winner and former INDYCAR champion and Rolex race winner [Tony] plus a Le Mans 24 Hour race winner [me!] in the same car we definitely had a very broad range of skills.
Onto race week and Andy qualified the car in sixth on the GT Le Mans grid which he was slightly disappointed with knowing his high standards. But it was a very solid session for Ford Chip Ganassi Racing with the Ford GT locking out the first three positions. We made some adjustments in the final practice sessions which definitely improved our car's performance and we entered the race quietly confident. We had the traditional pre-race speech from Chip and no one who was in that room left with any doubt about what our goal was for the race!
Andy started the Rolex 24 on Saturday afternoon with a very strong double stint always running within a few seconds of the lead before Tony got in and continued where Andy left off. The positions change all the time in Daytona depending on cautions and pit-stops but we were always within the top-five and a lot of the time inside the top-three.
Everyone had told me before the race that you just need to be in the fight at the end to have a chance of winning and everyone wouldn't be pushing too hard at the start to save the car and themselves. That was all great in practice but in reality everyone was fighting for the last inch of track from the moment I got in the car in hour four. With 25 plus GTDs on the track and Prototypes that aren't too much faster in the corners than the GTLM cars, it made for some great, albeit feisty, racing through the traffic. Despite all that I handed the car over to Andy in one piece at around 8:30pm and by 8:31 the heavens had started to open-come and race in hot and sunny Florida they'd told me!
The next 12 hours of the race were very tricky as the drivers and teams battled with the rain in the darknesss. I had never driven in both darkness and rain before and when I got back in the car at around 1am the track was in a terrible condition. There was so much spray on the restarts that the windscreen was a complete white out and you had to look out the side windows to try and keep a sense of where you were on the track. The IMSA officials decided that enough was enough and between 1.30 and 3.30 I must have done over 20 laps under caution. Even behind the Safety Car it was easy to lose the car and it was tricky to keep your concentration up and try and keep some heat in the tires. I can honestly say that it wasn't too much fun out there but I kept thinking about the bigger picture and surviving this tricky part of the race to be in the fight at the end.
We came through the night unscathed but unfortunately for Ford, the #67 had some contact with the wall and we were down to three potential chances to win the race. Being able to run all four cars at the event and the amount of data that produces plus sharing information with another 11 drivers, all with hugely impressive CVs, was beneficial and we all learnt a lot from each other up to and during the race. On a circuit where one tenth of a second is huge, that was important.
I got back in the car with a little over four hours remaining as the track started to dry out and had a great stint going from seventh to first in the space of about 15 minutes. The car was loving the conditions and it was a great feeling to lead the Rolex 24 At Daytona. I pitted for slicks and with two hours to go handed over to Tony from P3 for the final push to the line, but I could already feel that we were developing a slight power issue. Tony confirmed this when he jumped in and while we were only a few mph down on our peak performance, at a track like Daytona this is the difference from being in the fight, to just being able to hold on.
TK did a great job to hold on to fifth place at the finish but it was obviously slightly disappointing for the #69 crew, who were absolutely faultless throughout the race to have led so near to the end and not have challenged for the win. Any tinge of disappointment was patched over by the sight of Dirk Müller completing an incredible drive to win the race and write the Ford GT into the record books as Le Mans and Daytona 24 Hour race winners. We were the second Ford home, just five seconds behind after 24 hours in fifth with the #68 Ford also on the lead lap in seventh. I think everyone within Ford Chip Ganassi Racing deserves huge credit for such a successful race and getting four cars prepared in race winning condition.
I massively enjoyed my first IMSA race. The way the rules are make for hugely exciting racing right down to the final five minutes of a 24 hour race and while back in Europe and racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship is quite different, I was a huge fan and seriously hope to be back in the USA in the not too distant future! For the WEC team, this month is a month of preparation in the factory, getting the cars ready for pre-season testing next month. Myself and rest of the drivers are busy in the gym being beasted by our trainers but it will all be worth it when the cars are lined up at Silverstone for the opening WEC race over Easter in April. Hopefully I may see some fans from the USA there – come and say hi.
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