We are at 2/3rds distance into the Rolex 24. There have been plenty of races at the Rolex 24 where there's been stoppages due to fog and rain. Racing drivers don't like driving slowly in the wet. The key to being successful is being relaxed, but, don't fall asleep, whatever you do. In most pro classes in IMSA there are now driver time requirements, but in GT Daytona, there is a drive time requirement. It's so, so treacherous on cold tires, on a cold race track, in the rain. Teams are not using this time to meet the drive time for their minimum drive time for bronze and silver drivers. Most of them have already done their drive time, and they are using the gold and platinum rated drivers in the cars right now.
No one knew how long this full course yellow flag was going to be. Part of the planning was due to the weather forecast. We have standing water in the Bus Stop, and a safety vehicle is there to stop people from driving through a really deep puddle. The Corvette wreck has been cleaned up. Stay dry if you are standing down on pit lane. The class split is ongoing to line up all three classes in preparation for a restart. Will we restart, or will we keep circulating behind the safety car? Will Owen is driving the #50 Cadillac which soldiers on. The #84 Cadillac is out. Both of the Mazda's are out.
Wayne Taylor is having a discussion with the IMSA marshals. He wonders why they are going around behind the safety car and not just safe and sound sitting in the pit lane under a red flag. We do have a couple cars in the lane, including the #9 Pfaff Motorsports and #73 Park Place Motorsports GT Daytona Porsche's. Fuel has been added to the #73 car and Matt Campbell gets back into the race. Jeff Segal in the #12 Lexus RC F GT3 also pits. If Laurens Vanthoor wins GTLM and Dries Vanthoor wins GTD, will we see two brothers winning in two classes? Brothers have driven together at the Rolex 24 many times before, however, it may not have ever been before that two brothers have won in two different classes.
The standing water will be a major problem if we got back to green flag conditions. Lars Kern has just exited the #9 Porsche 911 GT3R. Do you move the water by having the cars circulate? Or, do you stop the cars in the pit lane? For the moment, there is too much water according to Lars Kern. It's cold, and the tires don't retain heat. It makes no sense to run at racing speed at the moment. Your windscreen covered in water, and flashing lights all around you, can get a little disorienting as the Lexus thunders away from the pit lane. Lars Kern has taken a production sports car around the Nurburgring to set a lap record, and he does a lot of test driving. Too much power, not enough grip, in a production supercar. 700 brake horsepower sans downforce. Nick Tandy and Lars Kern also raced the Porsche 911 GT2, and then, the Lamborghini Aventador reset the record, and Olaf Manthey took another modified GT2 Porsche and bit a few seconds out of the Lamborghini's record.
Being a race car driver, is a daunting task and is not for everybody. Yours truly, is quite comfortable, sitting here, writing about it. A few cars have hit pit lane to top off fuel tanks and do a couple driver changes. The rain is showing no signs of letting up, and there's no place for the water to drain. The grass is absolutely sodden as the #52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca LMP2 is still running, with Gabriel Aubry at the wheel of it. Nick Cassidy has done the debrief with his team, and communicate with co-driver Richard Heistand who is at the controls of Lexus #14 right now. This elongated yellow flag is necessary because of the weather and the IMSA marshals are doing the right thing. If a red flag comes out, nothing happens because cars will be at a dead stop.
Strategy is very difficult. Nick Cassidy and Jack Hawksworth will be set up to bring the car home at the end of the race, as we watch Fernando Alonso running in P1 behind the safety car at the moment. There's no option except to keep circulating and hope the rain eases up. The #96 Liqui Moly BMW M6 GT3 of Bill Auberlen is in the lane for service. Fernando Alonso is still circulating in the lead as we mentioned. Pipo Derani says that drivers need to stay awake under the safety car conditions. It is more mentally fatiguing in the rain than it is in dry conditions. They just have to hold on until the end.
Bill Auberlen says it is wet and slippery. Robby Foley is in the #96 BMW M6 GT3 to get his drive time filled in. A lot of drivers want to keep going, but safety is the #1 priority. All drivers are doing are looking for the unused outside part of the track where there's a lot of grip. Hydroplaning into corners is the tough part, even at slow speeds. The water runs down off the banking and the tires are gripping, but the standing water in the corners on the road circuit part of the track, makes the car want to spin out on you. Give a shout out to everyone who is working in the rain, the TV camera personnel, marshals, safety crews, and everyone else working at the speedway. Grab some hot coffee. Frankie Montecalvo is now at the controls of the #12 Lexus.
Up on the banking is easier in the wet, but the standing water in the corners is unreal. The drivers are really driving by the seat of their pants. Luca Stolz leads GT Daytona in the #33 Mercedes ahead of A.J. Allmendinger in the #86 Acura, followed by the #29 Land Motorsports Audi R8. Dries Vanthoor at the wheel. The top twelve GT Daytona cars are all on the lead lap, up to 12th place runner Ryan Hardwick at the wheel of the #48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 he shares with Bryan Sellers, Corey Lewis, and Andrea Caldarelli.
In GT Le Mans, the top six are on the lead lap with Alessandro Pier Guidi in the Ferrari leading over Porsche #912 of Laurens Vanthoor, followed by Joey Hand in the #66 Ford GT, #911 Porsche 911 RSR in the hands of Fred Makowiecki, and Ryan Briscoe in the #67 Ford GT, along with the #25 BMW M8 GT of Connor De Philippi. In LMP2, James Allen leads over Pastor Maldonado. Allen has 508 laps on the board (1,808 miles), and Pastor Maldonado has run 505 laps (1,798 miles). So, they are just ten miles apart. Kyle Masson in the #38 Performance Tech Motorsports car has run 501 laps (1,783 and a half miles). Fernando Alonso, race leader, has gone 516 laps (1,837 miles). In second is Dane Cameron in the #6 Acura followed by it's sister car #7 of Ricky Taylor. Then comes Eric Curran in the #31 Cadillac, the Whelen Engineering car.
They are the four DPi cars on the lead lap. Further behind are the #54 CORE Autosport Nissan DPi with Colin Braun driving, and Tristan Vautier at the wheel of the #85 JDC-Miller Cadillac, the sole remaining "Banana Boat" liveried car in this motor race. Sunrise in about ten minutes. The sight is lightening just a bit, but the rain isn't going to stop. No sign of the sun coming up over the eastern horizon. Ryan Hardwick was not eligible to drive at night, but he is now at the wheel of the #48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini. The car is running 11th in the overall at the moment.
The #13 Ferrari, the Via Italia Ferrari 488 GT3 is in the lane for a brake pad change. Nothing was done to the #48 Lamborghini on it's pit stop. The crew chief, Gareth says that the team is checking their telemetry, going over basic system checks. Race cars don't like going slowly. No end in sight right now, to the safety car period, but the skies are lightening up. The clouds are not breaking up, and the rain is pouring down. There's also been a stiff breeze all week. No sign in any movement in this cell of rain. This rain isn't going to let up anytime soon. We continue behind the safety car. The #62 Ferrari is leading in class, and Risi Competizione has only signed up to race at the Rolex 24.
It is Risi's 21st year in sports car racing, and their 14th Rolex 24. Risi says his outcome of the team competing will be based on Balance of Performance, and a good result might change their minds. The Risi Ferrari has not had their BoP addressed for the Ferrari, since the end of the 2017 season. Risi says, "do I want to put my money into this situation? If not, I will go someplace else, although I stand by the statement that IMSA is the best sports car racing in the world. Nothing in life is cast in stone. I'm hoping that we will have someone listening to what I am saying, or, we will go and race someplace else." With the treacherous weather, the smallest mistake can put you out of the motor race.
The conditions are not conducive to running fast. Giuseppe Risi said he got the racing bug as a kid in Italy. He is a diehard Ferrari guy, too. Filipe Albuquerque has brought the #5 Mustang Sampling Action Express Cadillac into pit lane for a splash of fuel. Hopefully he sees the red light at the end of pit lane. BMW M8 GT #25 is in the pit lane. There are two safety cars, so the safety car running out of gas shouldn't be an issue. Cadillac #31 is also in the lane for service and a driver change. Felipe Nasr set the fastest time in that car at 1:34.5. The sunrise is upon us officially, but the rain is getting worse. What will happen to the temperature? The ambient and track temps are even right now, but it is no fun to be out there racing in the cold and the wet.
In 2004, it was so damp, that the Daytona Prototype tire supplier in Grand Am, Goodyear, ran out of wet tires. Luca Stolz brings the #33 Mercedes AMG GT3 to pit lane. The crewmen are slipping and sliding on the wet pit lane as Luca Stolz gets out of the car, but we are not yet sure who the next driver in the rotation is. Ah. It's Jeroen Bleekemolen. The rain is going to be here until the end of the race. Pipo Derani is leading, and the safety car lights have been extinguished, which means we should get back into the race, right now. Fernando Alonso continues to lead the race. We might be going back to green. Or, the fuse is blown on the light bar atop the safety car. It happened once, at a race at Silverstone. The pace is picking up0.
Oh no! Red flag out at 7:22 A.M. we have a red flag here, at the Rolex 24. This puts the cars in parc ferme conditions and you won't be able to touch them at all. The red flag is out with just over seven hours to go. The red flag is out, and there are puddles in pit lane. The whole field is coming into the pits as the clock continues to run. Presumably, the race control decision is because this rain isn't going to let up at all. Team owners and managers have been petitioning this to IMSA. Wayne Taylor was one of the people asking constantly for this. Wayne Taylor wonders why they have to wait so long to get a red flag.
Alonso was two seconds quicker than everyone else. Fernando Alonso was talking to Kamui Kobayashi and said that aquaplaning was everywhere. It's impossible to drive. How can anyone say we should drive? Safety is at the forefront here. Safety is everything. It's for the driver's, the mechanics, and the fans. We saw Oliver Gavin fly off the road because of aquaplaning. We will all wait this out together. This is awful for everybody. All the blokes out there clearing the water are like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up a hill. Absolutely impossible. The rain is going to get worse in the foreseeable future. We need some kind of a restart, but let me just say, watching this, we are not going to get this race going again.
Grab some hot coffee and muffins, and settle in. Nothing can happen to the cars other than covering them up. We just have to patiently wait. It saps the driver's adrenaline. Deal with the weather and just wait. Simon Pagenaud definitely wants to keep driving. Pagenaud gives credit to his team for everything they've done, and he is looking forward to the entire rest of the season. This is exceptionally bad weather. Michelin brought 6,000 wet weather tires for this race. It is indeed the 50th anniversary season, for IMSA. The red flag has been displayed for ten minutes already. Fernando Alonso leads Dane Cameron and Ricky Taylor, followed by Pipo Derani, four laps off the lead, is Colin Braun, followed by Tristan Vautier.
In LMP2, James Allen leads and runs seventh overall. The #18 of Pastor Maldonado is next followed by Kyle Masson. In tenth, is the seventh placed #5 Cadillac, driven by Christian Fittipaldi in his final race as a pro driver. Ferrari, Porsche, Ford, Porsche, Ford, BMW, all these cars are on the lead lap in GTLM, and then, is the #3 Corvette of Antonio Garcia. Marcel Fassler has come back in the #4 Corvette after it's crash. They are 15 laps down to the class leader running eighth in class. Alex Zanardi is another three laps in-arrears in ninth in class. In GT Daytona, A.J. Allmendinger leads the motor race in GT Daytona. Dries Vanthoor is second followed by the #540 Black Swan Porsche, the #63 WeatherTech Ferrari, the Caterpillar #57 Acura, the #33 Mercedes, the #12 and #14 Lexus, and the #73 Park Place Porsche, are all on the lead lap along with Ryan Hardwick, and Jeroen Bleekemolen. Scratch the idea that #33 is higher up.
No comments:
Post a Comment