Daytona ROAR Jan 14-16

Reserved

This event has become a little more obvious with a series "tile" and practice sessions.

From this we're looking at Fri 14:00, Fri 23:00, Sat 03:00 and Sat 08:00 PST qualifying which means the Fri 11:00 PM race for me.

The race went fine, I can only blame myself, only came across a couple of drivers that I would rather avoid in the future.

2X incident total from tire offs @ Bus Stop.

Only one major scare when a TC Civic lost it under braking for T1 and slid by the front my car in a cloud of tire smoke, some fraction of second difference and my car would have been badly damaged.

More good luck perhaps later in the race when I was pitting and an incident sent a Miata sliding through the infield grass to crash to a stop at the inner pit wall. I think that cars are non-collide-able when pitting but that was only a few stalls ahead of mine and I could easily have been exiting when it happened.

I had practiced pit entries many times to identify a brake marker and technique for max speed but I braked too late in the race, possibly switched my timing up from brakes then pit limiter to pit limiter then brakes so I was 15 km/h fast at the limit line incurring a 40 second hold before release. Way better than a subsequent stop and go, though.

I may or not have partially made up for it by running the entire race on one set of tires, rather than going to a fresh set on my second stop. Coffey thinks that tires and fuel were serviced at the same time but I believed from testing in practice (GT4 this week, GT3 weeks ago) that it was fuel first, then tires. If it was like Coffey thought, I would have probably taken a full load of fuel and tires on Stop 1. The fronts tires started to concern me with about 10 laps to go, started sliding around more easily but the rears stuck well enough all the way to the end even with minimal wing. All that rF1 HGT&TC experience paying dividends with throttle control (and the ol' emergency brake jab).

I finished 5th with a penultimate lap pass to gain the spot. Once I realized that I was going to catch him, my plan was to wait for the last lap to easily make the pass after Bus Stop. From observing his driving,  I didn't want the car in question behind me to wipe me out at T1 but he turned out to be slow so that I was worried that I in turn was going to get caught from behind. That created a dilemma that I sought to clarify by feeling out if I could gap him between Bus Stop and T1. If not, then I'd let him go ahead at T1 for a last lap pass before Start Finish. With the white flag out, I was clear at T1 and he spun on his own a few corners to make the run to the checkers zero pressure for me. 

I'm most disappointed about the speeding penalty, would probably have been running nose to tail with Coffey after the pits stops which would have been more fun. My crazy late braking hit the line with a 1 km/h margin was dumb, trying to save one second cost me 40. Better now than in a team race, though.

Traffic kept us entertained the whole race, lots of Miatas which we just blew by everywhere and anywhere between an apex and braking zone. The TC cars weren't much slower than the GT4s so we often needed to follow them through a corner or hang back a little to be able to have normal line and speed apex out.

2.4 hours went by quickly, no physical discomfort during, after nor day after. I wouldn't have wanted to do it again this morning but I'm definitely looking forward to the next one.

Coffey finished 4th.