Feature
February 18, 2008

8³ The Eight Hour Daytona Endurance Race
by SimHQ Contributing Editor Joe Keefe

Introduction

In 1962 high-performance sports cars gathered for the first time at Daytona International Speedway's road course for the inaugural Daytona Continental, a 3-hour endurance race. The race was won in quite the odd fashion after Dan Gurney parked his disabled car, courtesy of an engine failure, at the top of the banking only feet from the finish line. As the clock ticked down to the end the 3-hour race, Gurney turned his steering wheel to the left and used gravity to roll across the finish line, winning the race after sitting stationary for some time. Race officials immediately changed the rules so that such a thing would not be permissible in the future.

Fast forward 46 years. The Daytona endurance race, long extended to a 24-hour event and renamed with a title sponsor to the Rolex 24 at Daytona, takes place at the Daytona International Speedway the last weekend in January or the first weekend in February each year. For 24 hours two car classes battle in a race of strategy, attrition, skill, and sleep deprivation, through the rain and 12 hours of darkness. This year's race featured a melee at the start, wheels falling off, and crashes during safety car periods, and through it all one team per car class emerged victorious. What would happen when SimHQ simulated the same event the following week?

The Mod

For the 8³, SimHQ used the SSCA (Simulated Sports Car Association) Enduro Challenge v1.35 mod for rFactor. A tip-of-the-hat to the folks at SSCA for allowing SimHQ to use their Enduro Mod for the race.

Although the mod replicates the endurance sports cars designed to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and associated racing series, it has been carefully designed to provide two car classes with three cars each, and cars within each class have been carefully balanced so that they provide equal performance. Despite having the "wrong" cars for the Rolex 24 (which uses Daytona Prototypes as the fast class and production-based GT cars as the slower class), a tried and tested mod is always a good choice.

The Enduro Challenge provides the following cars:

If you are a fan of sports car racing then you appreciate these cars. Besides, they’re not ugly like those Daytona Prototypes.

SimHQ added some personal touches to the interface, did a lot of testing to the finished package and announced race registration was ready.

Go to Page 2

Click here to go to top of this page.

Copyright 2008, SimHQ.com. All Rights Reserved. Contact the webmaster.