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Daytona Debrief
Daytona Debrief
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About this episode
The hosts dive into their experiences and challenges at the 24 Hours of Daytona, discussing team dynamics, tire strategies, and race incidents. Highlights include a dramatic wheel issue early on, a tough night stint, and a controversial blocking penalty involving BMW and Corvette that impacted the race outcome. They also cover standout performances from drivers like Marvin and the heartbreak of a mechanical failure for the leading LMP2 team. The episode blends technical insights, race drama, and personal reflections on endurance racing's highs and lows.
Topics:
daytona 24 hours
endurance racing challenges
tire management strategies
team dynamics
race incidents and penalties
bmw vs corvette controversy
driver performances
mechanical failures
race strategy
personal race experiences
Hinch and the Pfaff guys had a good, then bad, then good, then bad, then good, then ultimately bad time at Daytona.
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Ford Mustang
"...lified fifth and, you know, great effort. Um, the Mustangs clearly were <inaudible> around because the..."
Car
Ford Excursion
"...asn't drivers banging wheels, it wasn't off track excursions, it wasn't anything like that. It was just a belt..."
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
"...tever else. I mean like, it was good battles with Corvette, uh, with, um, the track house car that McLaughli..."
Select text to request an explanation
This is, is off track.
So James, hello And welcome .
Um, I forgot what we said.
Are we doing the, the Tuesday episode right now? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Um, hi everyone. So happy Tuesday.
Happy Tuesday. Hope your week is going well.
Um, I hope everyone recovered from their weekend 'cause I know that everyone stayed up on NBC watching.
Well, not James, um, pound around for the 24 hours Daytona, but like the rest of the people.
Um, so let's get straight into it.
James, let's talk about your Daytona experience.
Well, let's talk about my Daytona experience.
So, yes, I mean, you guys have heard all the, all the preamble, right?
Mm-hmm . You know, about the,
the teams switching manufacturers and the crazy hustle to get everything ready and whatever.
Yep. And then we talked after the roar
and everything went pretty well after the roar, so that was good.
And then, so we got to race week and We talked about TOK sensors and fake fuel Yeah. And all that. Yeah.
Yep. All that jazz. Mm-hmm .
So then you get to race week and it's like, you know, you know what it's like, man, they've got whatever, four practice sessions, five practice sessions, and it still feels like no time.
Like when you're splitting it with five, four guys, well, you're saving tires and stuff and Yeah.
You're saving tires. And so like, I, I don't want to say
no, I do say I, I felt like slightly under-prepared going into the race, like personally, because here's the thing, right?
Doesn't everyone though?
Yeah, probably. Probably. Yeah.
I've never, I've never once done that race.
And e and especially in our shoes being the the peasant guy.
Yeah. The bonus guy pound around in the night. Yeah.
Um, we don't get any sort of like, priority of anything 'cause we shouldn't.
So I haven't done that event ever and felt like I had any concept of going what was going on or what to expect until I was in the car under green flag conditions.
Yes. And, and that's ultimately the same story,
but like one of the, one of the challenges, right?
Is, you know, you, you learn by looking at data, really, like that's, in this scenario, I've got three factory drivers as teammates.
So a lot of good information to go off of.
And like, I'm very capable of driving around and then looking at data, seeing the difference, and be like, okay.
And then applying that. Mm-hmm .
The, the problem was, was like, you're looking at the data, it's like really only it, it is, you know, an IndyCar.
Sometimes you can get like a, an iPad in the, in the cockpit in between runs and you can look at it and then just immediately go right back out and, and try to apply right here.
You're never in the car for back to back runs.
Like I never would pit and not get out of the car.
So you're only looking at it in between sessions.
But because you're looking after things like tires and because in between session the track changes, and when there's 61 cars pounding around, things change a lot.
And so sometimes by the time, and we had this last year with the McLaren man, like by the time we had looked at the data from one session, we got to the next session, we did that.
And that was now wrong for this session, right? Mm-hmm .
So like, it's just such a mind <inaudible> because you're trying to like, and then you're like, do I just not know how to do this anymore?
Like, is it just, is it, am I there now?
Because like, it doesn't make sense what's happening?
And so there was a little bit of that going into the race.
And it's, you know, like, again, the, the team, we don't have maybe as many people as some others.
And even just like getting the chance to look at data or look at video, you're sometimes cutting into like the engineer or assistant engineer or somebody's, you know, task list.
Um, luckily I found out at one point that like Lamborghini has their own room Oh.
For engineers, like in one of the permanent buildings at the end of the paddock.
And I could like go there and talk to those guys.
So like, the factory dudes obviously know about that.
I didn't really know about that. Not on them, just,
I didn't, I wasn't aware and I wouldn't, I probably didn't ask enough questions about how it all worked anyway.
So going into the race, I didn't feel like, like I better than I had after practice just because, you know, you'd never, like, I don't think I had a new set of tires all through practice.
So you're just like, you're feeling a little like off.
And so I get in the race and my first in the race .
So the race starts. Great.
So Andrea starts, uh, qualified fifth and, you know, great effort.
Um, the Mustangs clearly were <inaudible> around because they blitz the field by a half a second.
So like, and I think so much of it's in a straight line.
Like it's through all that torque sensor stuff and through all the BOP or whatever, like teams still find ways around it because like Fords were nowhere.
They were just so average throughout practice.
And then they won two in qualifying by like four tens over the rest of the field.
No gamesmanship.
And, and Tom Foolery and Skullduggery still happening.
Um, so that was a bit frustrating. Skull. Yeah. Yeah.
That's new. Tim knows that's
A term that doesn't get used enough.
I agree. I feel like Skullduggery
needs to make a comeback.
I agree. It's the first time I've ever heard it.
There you go. Learn something today. Okay. Whatever.
But we, we were feeling pretty good for the race.
So we started fifth great start.
I think he got up to third and by the end of his stint he was running first.
So that was very good.
Uh, and of the first stint, he reported a bit of a vibration, which was a bit of a concern.
So we pitted him like a lap or too early.
And, um, when we came in the left side wheels decided they did not wanna remove themselves from the car.
So vibration, the vibration was So a, were connected A brand new set.
Yes. A brand new set of rims. Mm-hmm .
And I guess there's like a little bit of bedding sometimes that happens with these things.
So they ended up loosening almost a little bit.
And so the vibration was the wheel just shaking a little bit.
But then what that does is that jams it up against the lock and they couldn't get the, the wheel not off essentially.
And so, Hmm.
It led to a sort of panicked, frantic, you know, green flag stop, hammers, chisels, all sorts of wild stuff to get these wheels off.
Yeah. Yep. Guys got it done.
Amazingly, we did not lose a lap, but now we were DFL and um, yeah, but like in hour two in, in like the end of hour one.
Yes. So like, it was not, it was, it was annoying,
but it was not, I was like also irrelevant.
Correct. I said to Jordan right there, I was like,
if this is gonna happen, I want it to happen an hour two, not 22.
Right? Like, this is, we can, we can come back.
This is fine. So he did his other stint.
Marco got in, he did two great stints just picking guys off.
I think we got ourselves back up to like fifth or sixth.
I jumped in for my first stint by this point, kicked some ass by this point, it's nighttime.
And my first stint, Tim, was the exact opposite of that .
So, you know, I haven't driven the car in two days and I'm still learning and whatever, but I, I remember so clearly last year, like how much I figured out in the race because you're just nonstop running for two hours at a time, uninterrupted working on stuff, trying this, whatever.
So the first stint, they decided it was un under caution and they decided this would be a good time to start saving tires.
So we only did right side tires.
You're not allowed to double stint right sides in our class.
And so you can double stint left sides, uh, because, and you do that because they don't give you enough tires to put on a brand new set for every stint.
And you wanna save all the new sets, you know, you wanna make sure for the last four or five hours you have only new sets.
So you do some double stinting of the left side tires in the middle of the night.
And of course you need to do two of those just to get one full set's worth of tires.
Anyway, so my first lapse in the car we're at night and, um, on a restart where I had half hot tires, half cold tires, and it was a complete unmitigated disaster.
Like I restarted, I think eighth, I think like something in the cycle.
We ended up eighth on the restart and I fell back to like 12th.
I think there was only 13 cars in our class.
But because they, they do the class split between the GTD pros and the G tds.
So it's all the same car, right?
But kind of scored as different classes.
So I was eight in my class, but then I had 30 G tds behind me.
And half of those, you know, of those driver lineups, there's four drivers, like two of them are pros and three.
And so yeah, three could be pros.
And so I was just, I just got swamped, man.
It was so embarrassing. It was such a bad stint.
And I was just like furious and the car was so unbalanced and I'm like, oh my God, I should retire.
This is terrible. I hate everything.
I don't know what I'm doing. Why am I doing this?
I always say this every year, this race sucks.
I hate I'm never coming back. And I always come back
and it was just driving around saving my life.
And I was half expecting the call when they called me into pit.
I, I was half. 'cause like you're supposed
to do a double just be like, get out half expecting be like, alright man, we're gonna do a driver change on this one.
I'm like, that's it. That's gonna be my
last stint in a race car ever.
the last thing I ever do. Like, it was so bad.
It was so bad. So then we pay, I get four new tires.
So in my head I'm like, so it's the tires I got th everyone else had new tires.
I had half you, I ma I was making up all these like, you know, excuses, but I was like, I just gonna need new tires and I'll be good.
Get new tires. And then like 10 minutes
into the stint there was a yellow.
Perfect. So we, the, the field all closed back up.
And now I was class split. I was at the back of our class.
So I was 12 through 13 and then green flag fired off and drove up to I think third before our stint was done.
And went like two laps longer than we were planning passing cars.
Like just had a pheno. Yeah,
That part I was saying you kicked ass In.
Yeah. Like, you know, that moment when it, it just clicks,
you are like, oh, that's what it needs, right?
Like all the little, little bit of lap time that you lose in turn one and turn three and turn five and turn six to the other guys, you just, you drive around enough and you just get that feeling.
And I just, that feeling just clicked.
I'm like, okay, now, now we're in the ballpark.
And at a great stint was like super stoked, handed the car off and then unfortunately Jordan, uh, on a restart got caught up in, uh, a bit of a cluster.
Like I think Draz looped it on his own.
And then he did, came back on track and a couple p twos got into each other and there was just chaos in front.
And um, I think Jordan like was checking his mirror looked up and the BM BMW in front of him threw a flat out section a racetrack had jumped on the brakes and just had nowhere to go.
So, uh, unfortunately it was a big enough hit that it was terminal.
So two questions. Um, yeah, a
I can ask this 'cause I'm not his teammate.
Was that his excuse or was that really what happened?
And then B , it didn't look like that large of a hit. Why?
I mean, you see so many times, I mean, cars come back in, pieces, go back to the garage, get fixed, I mean a fricking GTP car to do a whole gearbox exchange and went back out.
So like why were you, were you out?
So question one, uh, yes. I I no, not as excuse.
Very, very plausible. He said
that like he went a little bit wide, like you know what this is like, right?
He went a little bit wide in turn one, right.
And so as he was coming off the corner, he looked in his mirror, but The crash is already happening in front Of him.
Yeah. I don't know if that information made it to him.
Oh right. 'cause you, you're right, your eyes
can sometimes just delete things from your brain. What,
Where the cars were crashed, right?
We're just hang out. We're letting dark that go dark.
We're just letting whatever that No, no, We're not acknowledging it.
He's, he's, he's taking the piss. Never not
Say never, never, Never. Don't say
Never don't believe.
I believe that's the thing. But like that,
that information didn't get to him when the crash is in front of him.
Like, I don't know. Oh, he's being sarcastic.
Well, no, but he's still, he's around the corner, right?
Like the class split.
I've watched it. Okay. Right.
But so he comes outta one Is seven cars in two pieces, but yeah.
Yes. But right.
He's far enough back that like the movement had sort of stopped and as he came outta the corner, he checked his mirror.
'cause he did go a bit wide and so he was making sure no one was trying to go side by side with him through the ss.
And then by the time he looked up, you know, again, it's a flat out section of racetracks.
You're not expecting somebody to be on the brakes.
And so that closing rate just comes so fast.
So I get it, like he, he put his hand up, he's like, look at the end of the day, whether I got the right information from the spotter or whatever.
Like he's like, I, I'm behind the wheel.
And he, you know, he took, he took the responsibility.
Um, and then the reason we couldn't continue 'cause it dude is one of those things it, right, like if you just look at the body work, it looks like he just scuffed it, like it, the dive plane was still on the right front corner, but because he had lock in it, it like, it like grabbed the, the Beamer and it ripped the right, folded the right front corner under basically, and it like pulled stuff outta the, the front clip of the car.
So like a change would've been an entire front end and it just wasn't, it wasn't worth it.
So, um, unfortunately that was why we were out.
But fortunate you always, I mean we all, all of us, every single driver in that field always says at Daytona, if you're gonna have an issue, make it big enough that you don't go out 50 Last time.
A thousand percent man. Like a thousand percent.
Like when it first Happened, I've done that so many times.
We were all like frustrated and whatever, but in my head I was just like, 'cause the Marco and we're both like, oh, we're definitely done.
I could tell we're definitely done.
He's out the car, we're definitely done.
I'm like, I don't know man.
I've pulled myself out a lot of times here and had to go back out 400 laps down.
just pood around like an idiot.
So I, but yeah, ultimately it was, it was the right call.
Um, so bummer.
But uh, and the rest of the race, another, another banger 24 man.
Like we've seen this happen so many times after 24 hours of racing, you come down to that last hour and there's some great stuff.
We're gonna come back to the issue I wanna talk about.
But, um, Nazar was he, he was driving the, the winning Penske Porsche, um, you know, did a great final stint, had to pass his teammate Matt Campbell and kind of controlled it from there.
Blum Quist, amazing final run.
That guy's so good in a prototype.
We've talked about that a lot on the show.
Um, also passed Campbell to get into.
Second was trying to chase down Nazar but couldn't quite get it done, but great for the guys from Shank and HRCA couple IndyCar drivers on that car with uh, Dixon and Rosen request.
Uh, and then in LMP two, uh, I don't even remember who won that one, if I'm honest.
Uh, Bordea. Oh that's right. Yeah. Tower. The Tower
Tower Motor Sports.
Yeah. Dude, the number 99 dominated that race. Sad.
And they had some so sad battery issue like in the last hour.
Well, yeah, so tragic.
So, so Christian Rasmus was driving that car.
Um, they were the class of the field, the whole race, the 88, uh, which I don't remember who was in that in that car, but that was really their only competition.
They had an engine failure, um, with like three hours to go something like that.
Very rare because it's heartbreaking kind of program for those.
Yeah. Um,
but what that meant is it was basically just gifted to the 99.
Not gifted, but like they, they were, they were the best car by a mile.
Yeah. And Christian was out there.
He was gonna be the finishing driver again, which you gotta, you gotta appreciate considering he was sharing that car with Bain Cameron, who is defending champion of GTP and Im za and, and you know, has had this huge amount of success in sports cars for the past decade plus.
Christian got the nod to finish, was driving around like 10 laps into a stint, um, got a low battery alarm.
And so when they came in for their scheduled pit stop, they had a look in the alternator belt had shredded itself, which meant that they were pretty much done without fixing that.
That you have to, you have to have battery, um, obviously in the car.
So for what Oh, stuffing things.
Um, so that's just, that's just a sad, this is a sad unlucky story.
'cause there was no, it wasn't, you know, installation error.
It wasn't drivers banging wheels, it wasn't off track excursions, it wasn't anything like that.
It was just a belt that failed and it's just like, And it's probably like a $12 belt. Yeah. You
May just 24 hours Michael's slowing down.
Right? It's, it's like a small,
like the famous in Michael and Reddy slowing down or Oh yeah.
It's just such a minor piece of the car that ruins a Yeah.
Otherwise great race.
Think back to like Toyota at Lamont a couple years ago, last lap.
They had an electrical gremlin car goes into like limp mode and couldn't, you know, lost the race just like endurance racing can be so tragic like that.
Um, but stoked for, for Sebastian and, and Tower Motorsports great, great job there.
Um, GTD Pro went to a Mustang.
Um, so their trickery Shenanigans Stole duckery and shenanigans paid off.
But honestly it was a great final stint.
Like there was a really good race happening, like they earned it in that last stint, whatever else.
I mean like, it was good battles with Corvette, uh, with, um, the track house car that McLaughlin and SVG and Connor Zi and Ben Keating were in.
Um, were kind of in the mix there. I
Wouldn't say there was good battles, but there was battles of the BMWs, um, and then Gtd, Marvin, our guy Marvin.
Marvin got a watch, man. So Cool. It's pretty
Cool. Yeah.
Canadian team or f it Was, it was amazing to see, like obviously we, we got to see firsthand like his capability.
Yeah. Um, you know,
and a lot of that always in my mind was like, oh, he is the McLaren factory guy.
Like he, he's developed these things and Yeah, of course he's got the drive A million miles in it. Yeah.
Yeah. He jumps into a Corvette for the first time
and is the benchmark the fastest guy?
And it's like, oh, okay. He's just, he's just pretty good.
So dude, he, he did a monumental triple in like the last five hours that got them up into the lead and had a nice lead and he, his drive time got too high, he couldn't finish.
Uh, so they put Matt Bellon who did a great job 'cause he was, he started up front, fell back a couple spots and then like he muscled his way back into the lead and held it.
So, um, huge, huge for those guys.
Really, really happy for Marvin who, like all the other drivers on the team have like shaved heads and I guess he made a bet that if he won he'd also shave his head.
So I got news for you, Marvin's now bald, That doesn't, that's like the opposite of a Marvin Kirkoff thing to do.
It's like the most up Marvin thing ever.
Yes. Yeah. Like the other most, he's
A very put together human being.
He is. And he's got a gorgeous glowing,
golden flowing locks had hat, they're on the floor of a trailer somewhere, uh, on their way back to Toronto.
But, um, but yes, the, the, the, the one thing I just wanna touch on is the whole BMW Corvette thing because it was such a cross and I'm mad that BMW were even allowed to continue participating in that race.
But I get a little dramatic with these things.
So explanation, um, BMW's leading, no Corvette's leading BMW's in second and GTD pro, the sister BMW had been damaged earlier in the same wreck that we were involved in and was 47 laps down or something.
Okay. We're coming into the last two hours of the race.
It's crunch time. This car is on track, 47 laps down.
The leaders are catching it now.
I think everybody expected a little bit of gamesmanship here in terms of that BMW not just letting the Corvette go because shouldn't, he had a two and a half, three second lead over the other BMW and fine.
That's, that's part of racing. I get it. Here's the problem.
He did it so dramatically that he actually got a blocking penalty for it.
Like that alone is too far and it's, I'm gonna call him that.
It's Augusto Fest was driving the car for BM bmw.
Tommy Milner was in the, uh, vet and to, to go so far that you're blocking so aggressively to a car that you are 47 laps down to and is the class leader immediately.
That's a, that's such a black mark on a driver's record and like that is such a no-no.
And so he gets a, he gets a drive-through penalty at this point.
The teammate is caught right up. He's right on the bumper
of the Corvette, uh, con de Philippe.
He's driving that car and then they get to term three, the lap that the, the penalty gets called.
So he's coming in that lap for a penalty.
He just brake checks Tommy in the middle of a corner.
Connor tries to pass him around the outside because he brake checks him.
Tommy runs into the back of the BMW swerves to get around him.
Ends up making contact with the other BMW that's now trying to pass him around the outside and essentially destroys his race, body body damage.
They got black flagged for it and Corvette was basically outta the running a after that.
Yeah, I get there's team orders.
I get slow and I get not making it easy for him, but like that level of what he did and, and, and Tommy Milner's a better man than I am because he actually put out a post on Twitter saying, Hey look, you know, I've raced against Augusto for 15 years.
We've always been clean, always been tight.
I'm sure he was just following orders.
And I'm sure all of that is true.
And I don't think this one thing has to define this guy's career.
He is been around a long time. He's done a lot
of good things, but what he did there was so atrocious.
Like it's hard to respect him moving forward because like to interact 22 hours into a 24 hour race with everything that people do to put themselves in a position to win there.
And he just intentionally like ruined it for an entire group of people that he doesn't even know.
Maybe he's never met. I don't know.
It, it makes me so angry that he did that and that that team got robbed up an opportunity to go after a win.
You know, orders fine. Oh yeah.
So the rest of, yeah, so like the end of the day the wheel is in your hands and what he did was, I guarantee you the team didn't ask him to do that.
Right. He took it that far of his own accord. Yeah.
And if I was imsa I would've benched both BMWs because if there was any kind of team order and your employee took it too far, sorry.
It's a team sport. And um, the Corvette then went back out
and took out the car that was running in a podium position, which I have no problem with.
I actually, I I hate that <inaudible>, I hate when it happens in nascar.
Sounds like high racing dude.
It's a hundred percent like that.
And it doesn't happen in IndyCar because that's just not the, we don't have those kind of cars.
Like we don't have that option.
But I hate when it happens in nascar.
I hate when it happens in sports cars, but I was fully, fully endorsing Corvette to take out BMW after that happened.
It's just is infuriating.
Uh, all right, last question.
'cause I know we gotta record another episode right after this.
It's your opinion. Uh, will you be back next to you?
Yeah, obviously. Of course. I wanna go back.
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