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Saw your video Andy, tell us how everything went. Who all drove? Car problems? Weather? Finish position? How long did you drive out of the 14 hours and how was the time for the 7 drivers broken up? Car sounded great on the vid.
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Very cool experience.
David McDaniel (Hoser Racing team owner and fellow Time Trialer/Hillclimber) was kind enough to offer me a rental seat at Daytona in his '84 300zx set up for the ChumpCar endurance race. The race was a 14 hour endurance using the full Rolex course (3.56 miles/lap) and there were around 120 cars starting on a double-file flying start.
We started in 106th position and were doing 2-hour driver stints (the max allowed by ChumpCar rules). I took over for the 2nd stint at lap 28 with the car in 71st position and 2 hours later brought the car in on lap 65 in 36th position. The car was in pretty much the same condition as I started with so I was happy with that. Stint 3 got us down to 35th position but pitted after only 30 laps. His cool-shirt was not working and with a heat index of 105+ he was done.
Stint 4 was going great with a fast driver (one had had actually driven the car before and driven at Daytona) really making progress. Then the alternator failed. After some heroics by the driver getting the car to the garage, including pushing it himself, the alternator was swapped, car fueled and another driver installed. About 45 minutes lost and the car was down to 54th position. David put in a great stint and made some positions up before handing it off to the former manager of the car, Micheal, who has more time in the car and at Daytona than anyone else in the group.
Michael double-stinted the car, racing for nearly 4 hours in varying conditions of light rain, dry track and dark of night. And all with no cool-shirt. At the end of the race (10pm) we were in 29th position and thrilled about it!
14 hours, 251 laps and more than 893 miles. The BFG Rivals did great, plenty of life left. The Hawk Blues were adequate and had some life. Top speed was a bit over 130mph at redline.
It was a bit daunting driving an unknown car out of the Daytona pits and straight into the wheel-to-wheel battle for the first time.
Gentleman's racing my ass. The competition is real. There's bumping, nudging, dive-bomb passes and more. I quickly learned that driving a qualifying lap (as in Time Trials) is like having a billboard that says dive bomb me at every turn. My TT mindset adapted and soon I was taking lines to protect my position, learning to draft on the banked oval and stay out of the way of the fast guys without giving up positions to slower traffic. A lot like driving in New York City to be honest.
Now, who wants to start a Chump team??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXF-ZvkLIgQLast edited by jatow; 05-30-2014, 07:59 PM.Andy Tow
ND Miata
Eliminator V2 - Sold- -
29th, no cool shirt, and 45 minutes down for alternator problems, that is a great finish. You looked like you were handling the traffic with no problem and you stayed out of that wreck one car up. He went into the wall hard. Thanks for the update, very cool.Comment
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Andy, glad you enjoyed the event and glad we all got together for dinner that night. We were out there with Andy and David as well, we had a blast. Our best finish to date, starting 90th and managing a 20th position finish. I tend to agree with Andy, there is plenty of dive bombing in corners and such, gotta make you mind up to drive clean and defensive while trying to keep a good pace, or just going all out like some others. Our #1 mission was to finish and get everyone there stint.
SooZee also ran with a team out of ATL for her first W2W event, she did well, but she did get tagged late in her second stint by some a-hole that completely blew a braking zone, tagged her front driver fender and ran off with another car as well in turn #1. SooZee did well to stay under control and continued but the strut housing was bent and after a while longer they had to retire.
We played our strategy on pitting under yellow when at all possible and we think that helped us. We only made one pit under green as I remember. And more importantly we really had no mechanical issues this race, we had a weird ECU electrical things but after a reboot all was good.
Here is some of our video
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