Test
Days at Daytona
1/7-9/05
With the consolidation of the GT and SGS
classes for this year's Rolex Series, we expected a huge and highly
competitive field for the 24-Hour race. Contrary to the class
designation, this year's GT is far more like last year's SGS category
than GT. This was evident in that every GT Porsche was running as
a GT3 Cup.
The entry list certainly
did not disappoint. Last year's champions were with TRG, and the remaining
TPC cars are always strong. The dominant Supercup team Farnbacher
also arrived to try endurance racing. The most radical cars in the
field came from Flying Lizard. At least one of their "GT3
Cup" cars was actually an ALMS GT3 RSR from '04 downgraded to a cup
car. The PTG BMW's will also be a factor as always.
Cory
Friedman took the 2005 GT3 Cup out for its first run on Friday
morning. The car was not perfect, but it ran well and Cory was
fast enough to put us 3rd in the GT class. After the initial
shakedown run, we began to cycle the other drivers through to get
familiar with the car and track. PCA stand-out Steve Johnson and
4-time Rolex 24 winner Al Bacon joined Cory and Leh for the Test.
We
had some minor issues that can be expected when running a new car for
the first time, but nothing was catastrophic. We were very pleased
with how fast the car was right out of the box and all weekend. We
typically sat between 3rd and 5th in the GT field and in general were
less than a second off the fastest car. The fastest car consistently
through the weekend was the Flying Lizard car, as expected.
Farnbacher got off to a relatively slow start, and it wasn't until
Sunday that they did any impressive times. The M3's were never as
dominant as they were last season, but we expect that they were
sand-bagging. They tore up one of the cars a little, so they
must've been pushing fairly hard.
We
are very pleased with the Test. Our car ran with no major problems
and we were a bit faster than the time sheets reflect. We still
have some tuning to do, but by qualifying time, we expect to have it
worked out and are hoping for at least a top-five.
We
also debuted our Grand Am Cup GS class 996. Cory will be sharing
driving duties with Brian Bailey. Brian started as a strong PCA
Racer and moved into Grand Am Cup last season driving an Acura
NSX. We opted to run the Porsche with the smaller 3.4 liter engine
and lower minimum weight. We made great progress with the 996
throughout the test and easily posted top-ten times. While we
expect the smaller engine to be competitive for the rest of the season,
the decreased torque became significant on the banks of Daytona.
We outpaced the competition through the infield, but came up a bit short
on the timesheets. Being our first effort into GAC, we expected to
get off to a slow start, but by the end of the weekend, we were only
slightly more than a second off the fastest car. By race day, we
expect to pick up a bit more time and hope to start closer to the top
five. With our driver line-up, we should be able to make up the
difference through the race and contend for the podium.
The
Daytona Test weekend was certainly successful. We dealt with many
issues and are aware of where we need to improve. We are confidant
that we will be stronger when we show up for the actual race. |
