Feature: 8³ The Eight Hour Daytona Endurance Race

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Qualifying

Qualifying for the event began at 9AM EST on the morning of February 2nd, with each car allowed 5 laps total. With an in- and out-lap cars had just 3 chances at setting their best time. By 9:45AM all of the cars had made their best effort, and the grid was set. Unfortunately the SimHQ Motorsports team was unable to participate in the event because of some personal matters that their drivers needed to tend to. We had already lost one team before the green flag was waved.

A note on lap times: the cars in the Enduro Challenge mod are faster than the Rolex Sports Car Series cars. In real life the Daytona Prototypes are about as fast as the GT-class cars in rFactor’s Enduro Challenge mod; this years’ pole time at the Rolex 24 was 1:40.793.

The Race: Hour 1

After a 15-minute warm up period and a driver’s meeting, the cars headed to the grid for the start. After a clean pace lap the race went green and the cars were off! At this point my heart was pounding and I really struggled for the next few laps to find any sort of rhythm with the car. I told myself to just hit my marks and drive like I had practiced, though, and it worked for a while. TPG Racing quickly zoomed off into the lead of the GT class, while I fought it out in the GT class with Team Motorbreath’s Aston Martin about 2.5 seconds behind me and maintaining the gap. Up ahead in the Prototype class No Clue Racing’s Vikz was steadily pulling out a lead over the 04 Dimwit B car driven by "SteV8". Unfortunately "Ahmad" lost his connection to the server just 6 or 7 laps into the race and Team Rambo was the first to suffer the fate of errant technology. Everyone from P4 down moved up one place in the overall classification. Sadly, "Ahmad’s" teammate "Col Kurtz" did not even get to drive a lap. "Ahmad" later determined his router was the culprit for their DNF (did not finish).

The Grid

Green!

Poor Team RAMBO

Nerves and the close racing started to take their toll as the race progressed, and approaching mid-stint (a full race stint in all cars is 27-30 laps) things began to happen. In the GT class "DBR9" had settled into a rhythm a bit faster than I had, and on lap 14 he had closed the gap to just 0.6 seconds heading into T1. This pressured me into a mistake; I tried braking slightly late to defend my position and spun the car; "DBR9" was through and clear easily. Up front Vikz was having his own issues. He comments, "I was on-edge right from the start and couldn't really settle into any kind of rhythm, but pushed nonetheless and managed to pull out a 10 second lead over "SteV8" by lap 12. The gap stayed pretty constant from lap 12-18 when the medium rears started showing signs of wear. I was struggling under braking into T1 and my lap times dropped into the high 1:35's and 1:36's while Steve was getting faster and faster. He was pulling back the gap at the rate of over half a second a lap."

After lap 20 the leading Prototypes caught up to the GT cars for the first time and began to lap them. On lap 25 the 08 Motorbreath car was the first car to pit and driver "DJCarney" took over the duties from "DBR9". "DBR9" had managed a consistent stint with no "offs" and it had worked well, gaining him a place on the track. One lap later I brought the 01 SimHQ Enduro-holics car into the pits, but not before TPG Racing’s "Paco" passed me to put me down one GT-1 lap. An entire lap lost in a single stint tells you how fast this team was. I executed team strategy as planned, staying in the car and electing to not change the hard tires. The strategy paid off well, putting me out ahead of the 08 Team Motorbreath car by over a minute; they had elected to change tires as well as swap drivers, which takes a lot of time in the pits.

DimWit B takes the lead

On lap 27, approaching the end of the Prototype drivers’ first stints, Vikz caught up to me again after my pit stop. He went past into T1 but made a mistake and spun the car into the left-side Armco barrier. The 04 Dimwit B car zoomed past to take the overall lead, and Vikz pitted that lap, giving up early on his choice of medium rear tires. No Clue Racing went to hard tires at the rear for the following stints and suffered no further difficulty, but dropped to P4 after the stop, relinquishing further positions to the 02 French Connection and 03 Dimwit A cars. On lap 31 "SteV8", "Pierre1", and Thomas pitted from P1, P2, and P3, respectively. They maintained their relative order but Vikz retook the overall lead.

At the end of the first hour the standings were:

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