Marc's report about the practice sessions
Dear fans,
Today our 2008 season really started. After a busy winter period, we ran our first official laps with our Riley during the free practices and the qualification for the first race of the year, the Rolex 24h of Daytona. During the winter, our Riley got a new chassis and it hasn't been easy to improve such a successful car, but nevertheless Riley Technologies managed to do it.
After a lot of hours in the wind tunnel, on the seven-post-rig and severe testing on the Daytona track in the beginning of this month, the work paid off during the first practice sessions today. The four teams that already have the 2008 model, were all in the top 5 during qualifying. This proves that it is time for the other teams to order their update.
For us the weekend had an average start. During the first free practice session we had a lot of understeer. In that training I went on track first and handed over the car to Jim. After a deliberation with the team, we started the second free practice with a completely different setup. This time Jim started the session and he handed over the car to me. We ended both sessions in the top 10. Because we did a little to much effort to lose the understeer on the car, we had a lot of traction problems during the second session. This is why we chose for an intermediate solution for the qualifications. During the 15 minutes qualifying session I managed to put the car in 3rd position on the grid, which is the same result as last year.
We are happy with the result, especially because we are the first Pontiac team on the grid. The front row is for Oswaldo Negri (My teammate in Formula 3 in 1992) and Nascar/Red-Bull driver AJ Almendinger, who everyone probably still knows because of his good results in Champ Car a few years ago. Nice to know is that they both drive for the Michael Shank Racing team. This team started a partnership this year with Yates for the tuning of their Ford engines.
Everyone allways says, that qualification is not the most important part of a 24h race, but it for sure an advantage to start at the front and not in the dangerous midfield. With this I mean that the possibility for an accident is much bigger if you start in the midfield. Speaking of crashes, it will be a difficult 24h because there are 22 prototypes and 44 GT cars at the start this year.
It started raining over here after the qualificatying session, which made track conditions far from ideal for the last practice session of the day. Because with this weather it was impossible to look for a better race setup, the Riley-Matthew Motorsports team decided to stay in during the last practice session of the day. Instead, we used the time to change the engine, gearbox, brakes, etc into race configuration. The shade-down of the car will be done tomorrow during the last two free practice sessions. In this sessions Ryan en Johnnie will get track time to get familiar with the car. In the end also Jim will probly do a few laps. I won't be driving any more until Saturday. I start the race and drive the first stint. What our strategy will look like is something we haven't decided yet. That decision will be made on Saturday morning.
Of course I will try to inform you again as soon as possible regarding the next practice sessions.
Greetings from Florida,
Marc.