24 hours of Daytona International Speedway
24 hours of racing is a long time! The way of thinking when it comes to strategy and attitude towards the race and overtaking becomes something completely different. Especially at a track like Daytona, where the long straights gives a massive opportunity for drafting and fuel saving.
This was our first 24 hour race as a team, and while several team members had raced long races before in other teams, all of us looked forward to taking on this massive task as Hellracers. Our car choice this time was the Corvette C7 Daytona Prototype, the only car competing in the fastest class in this race (the other two classes being GT3 and GTE). Why choose this car? Well, though none of us had actually driven it seriously, and some of us had to buy it for the first time in order to prepare for this race, we discovered that it is a really fun car to drive and for all of us it was something different from the GT3s and GTEs that we normally drive.
Except for the qualification, where a rookie mistake led to the car being damaged during the qualification laps and us starting in 10th position, the start of the race felt really good. We quickly climbed in positions and after a few hours, even though we chased the leader with around 20 seconds between us, we were on a fuel strategy that would in the end close that gap or even let us overtake them just by strategy alone. When the sun went down at Daytona and our night drivers took over, we were in a steady second place with margins both up and down, but still with an advantage in fuel strategy over the leaders.
We had car contacts a few times, an unfortunate GTE car turned us around spinning in turn 1, barely missing the walls, but we still were in a position where we fought for the win. 15 hours in, another car contact when a lapped DP missed their braking point, spinning us into the path of a GT3 car and … car was too damaged to continue and had to be repaired. After repairs, the result was that this accident put us down 5 laps from the leader, and all chances of a good position in the race were basically over.
However, it didn’t feel right to just park the car, so the morning drivers took over and drove the car until the finish line where we ended in P8, still a respectable position given the competition but very unsatisfactory given our pace and strategy.
The drivers who put in their best this time and will come back for revenge were Jonas Bodin, Stellan Lindeberg, Marcus Simonsson, Magnus Vallström and Wilhelm Wiberg. Thanks to you all for a great effort, thanks to the rest of the team for great support, thanks to Tershine for broadcasting our race and thanks to you for reading this! :-)
We should also mention the winners in our split, one of the Kinetic Racing cars who did the 24 hour race with just two drivers, racing 12 hours each! Well done to you both, great performance!