Daytona 24h report
Hi all, the Rolex 24h of Daytona are behind us a few days now, and I'm back home and in preparation for the second race in Homestead on March 29th.
The 24h were a race with a lot of ups and downs for us.
First of all, I would like to thank al the team members for their effort during the weekend. Also I would like to put my personal partners Eurotech, Freem and Speadwear in the spotlights, because their support is very important to me in order to be able to race in ideal circumstances within the Riley Team.
But over to the race now. First of all let me tell you what happened at the start of the race, where we started from the pitlane. About an hour before the start of the race, we had to make a choice between slicks and rain tires. Because there was a little rain 90 minutes before the start of the race, the track was a bit wet. This combined with the fact that there was only little sun and wind, there was a big chance that the track would still be quite wet at the start of the race. This is why we chose to start on rain tires, which was the safest option. The winning car also took this decision. During the warm up lap, I saw the track was almost completely dry and I decided to come in for slick tyres immediately. Because there are two warm up laps, I needed to wait and start from the pitlane.
During my first stint, I managed to get back in front of the race. Jim took over and drove a good stint. His laptimes were good, but the competition in the top 10 was quite hard. He managed to keep his position in the top 10 quite well. Afterwards, Jim and Johnny got us back in the top three of the race. Then it was my turn again and Jim decided that he wouldn't drive any more as long as we had a chance of winning the race. As many of you probably saw, the weather wasn't as constant as our driving. It kept on changing from dry to wet and medium dry. That made the race more difficult, but that is the same for the other participants too.
As of this season, there is a new safety car procedure. This means that during the first lap behind the safety car the pitlane remains closed. During the second lap only the Prototypes are allowed to pit and during the third lap, only the GT cars are. Afterwards everyone can pit. This also means that after a safety car period, the leader in the race is directly behind the safety car, but that it isn't a nice queue of prototypes. This implicates that with a restart you can have one or more GT cars in front of you. This asks for a little strategy change in order to gain as much "track position" as possible. In this area, the Riley Motorsports team showed they were one of the most professional teams once more.
Also technically, we were well prepared. The car kept on running like a Swiss watch. On the contrary to what a lot of websites mentionned, we had no problem whatsoever, except for a little one with the clutch towards the end of the race. This caused our car to stall during pitstops, but this wasn't that bad because all drivers knew what to do.
So you probably ask yourself where we did lose the race ? At a point in time, when Johnny was behind the wheel (approximately after 19h in the race), he lost the car in turn 4. When he tried to regain it, he ended up backwards in the tyres of turn 5. When the car got back to the pits, we saw the rear was damaged badly. Even the cover of the gearbox was hit. The reparation of the car and the change of the gearbox made us loose 17 laps. This is an excellent job of the pitcrew of course, but loosing 17 laps, is just too much.
In my last double stint I had to come back to the pits once too. When I accelerated out of turn 6 there was a GT car backwards on top of the banking. When I got near him, he got off his brakes and roled down. I could only avoid him in one way, and that was through the grass. Because of this, I had to come in to get the dirt out of the grill, to keep the engine temparature under control.
It was a good race for the Riley-Matthews Motorsports team, but unfortunately not with the result we hoped for. Luckily we still managed to score some points for the championship.
I aslo want to explain why the name of the team changed to Bob Stallings/Riley-Mattews. Starting this season there is a cooporation between the #91 car en the #99 car of the reigning champions. This is the reason why the team chose to enter using this name. Both the teams keep on using their own trailer and pit box however, but there is interaction between the drivers and the engineers.
Last but not least I want to thank everyone for their support during the 24h. I got a lot of mails and SMS and there were also a lot of familiar faces from Belgium and the Netherlands in Daytona. Also the pit crew, engineers, spotters, ..., in short all team members and I probably still forget some people. A big thank you, all of you for your commitment during the weekend.
Meanwhile the Riley team already started with the revision of the car. Afterwards we will have a few days of testing on the seven-post-rig and in the wind tunnel. At the end of February there is a test session in Homestead.
Marc.