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This week was round six of the Grand American Rolex Sports Car series. We went to Daytona International Speedway for the Paul Revere 250. As usual, I was driving for Orbit Racing in a Porsche GT3RS in the GT class. My co-drivers were the father-son duo of Jay and Joe Policastro.
We were acting as a support race for NASCAR's Nextel Cup event, so we had a rather unusual schedule. All practice and qualifying was held on Wednesday afternoon and evening and the race started at 11:00pm on Thursday.
PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING
We had one long practice session from 2:00pm until 5:00pm, with a fifteen minute break sandwiched in the middle. We started off playing with wing angles and immediately found some stability under braking and in the quicker turns, and to my surprise we didn't seem to sacrifice straight line speed. We made some small adjustments to the shocks, and then later made an anti-roll bar adjustment, which further improved the car.
I think the fastest we went in practice was a 1:57.2, which was only about fifth quickest, but I was happy with the way the car was performing going into qualifying.
The qualifying session started at 6:00pm for GT and SGS cars and lasted for fifteen minutes. The car was strong and I was able to turn a 1:55.6, which was good enough for second on the GT grid. I was a little disappointed because I found myself over slowing the car going into some of the slower corners because the braking was so much better than what I was expecting. I definitely felt like I left some time on the table.
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