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24 hour daytona

J

jackmart

Active member
Ok, so I saw mention to this in another thread and I have heard of it once before. I am rather new to racing so is this liek nascar racing. I know that Scott Dixon won it once and Milka Duno did too and I saw on wiki thta Danica was in it. What is it exactly, a bunch of different races happening in 24 hours, are there open wheel cars?
 
The Grand-AM sportscar version of 24 hrs of LeMans held in Daytona Speedway on the road course. Drivers from many different series and disciplines usually participate.
 
Ok, so what kind of cars race there?


like were all the racers that i mentioned above in sport cars like nascar kinda?
 
Well the cars are divided into two classes. The faster class is known as Daytona Prototypes. The chassis uses a carbon fiber monocoque and a steel roll cage so you could call it a hybrid of an open-wheel car and a stock car.

303172010_3cc2075769.jpg


The slower class is known as Grand Touring. The cars are modified street cars. The class is usually dominated with Ferraris and Porsches, but Pontiac and Mazda have been having strong showings lately.

gt_class.jpg
 
The cars at the Daytona 24 Hour race are Grand Am spec sportscars in two classes, the "Daytona Prototype" and "Grand Touring." Both types have roofs. Daytona prototypes are a tube framed chasses with V8 engines (save the handful of Porsche prototypes), several chassis are available along with several engine makes. The GT cars are either lower tech "true" GTs like the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (several specs below the Le Mans 911) or Grand Am "Prep 2" chassis, which are really generic tube frame cars with sillouette bodywork and a stock-based engine.

This thread belongs in the GT forum, so I'm moving it there... will leave a redirect.
 
call_me_andrew said:
Well the cars are divided into two classes. The faster class is known as Daytona Prototypes. The chassis uses a carbon fiber monocoque and a steel roll cage so you could call it a hybrid of an open-wheel car and a stock car.
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they are fast :confused: take them to La Sarthe and even the Astons and Corvettes will beat them.

GrandAm has butt ugly cars and try and get big-name drivers to try and get ratings, hense you see Nascar and IRL drivers take part. Lemans is so, so, so much better, watching the still cameras on the mulsanne is a breathtaking beautiful sound
 
The IRL fan said:
the only thing i can say is, i cant wait for the 24 hours of daytona cuz im going next year!
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Lucky man. I went there three times and I loved the experience. How long are you going there?
 
ChampUSfan said:
Lucky man. I went there three times and I loved the experience. How long are you going there?
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i want to try and stay 2 weeks, now im just trying to find some ppl to come with me, it will be my first time there its going to be hard going to the track where we lost dale earnhardt, the last race i was at, was MIS and it rain, it seems like everytime i go to the track it rains :( , but if it does rain i can always jummp into the jet dryer and help dry the track,like i did at MIS ;)


3 times WOW i hope you had a great time, its great to hear you loved the experience that sure helps someone like me who wasnt been, cuz sometimes i hear nothing but bad things about some tracks, like this one time i heard nothing but bad things about texas, and i went it was great, so the guy that told me texas was crap, i guess texas wasnt his kind of race track, but you seem like a smart fan so i take your word ;)
 
The IRL fan said:
i want to try and stay 2 weeks, now im just trying to find some ppl to come with me, it will be my first time there its going to be hard going to the track where we lost dale earnhardt
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You know i guess you should think twice before going there. Once, I went to a race track where I lost a driver I liked and that was really harsh. I guess if you don't want to cry all days, think about it twice.
 
ChampUSfan said:
You know i guess you should think about going there twice. Once, I went to a race track where I lost a driver I liked and that was really harsh. I guess if you don't want to cry all days, think about it twice.
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it sholud be ok, i think i will just stay away from trun 4,its hard to belive that its been 7 years now, i will just try and not think about it when im there sholud be ok,
 
thanks for the information. I feel that open wheel cars are so different from other cars i have a hard time seeing the indy drivers in them. Where could i find a clip or pic of racers like danica, milka or scott?
 
When Castroneves, Briscoe, and Kurt Busch drove for Penske in this year's Rolex 24, Busch said it was funny listening to them saying the Daytona Prototype was heavy and that they should drive his stock car. ;)

Really, with Dario Franchitti, Montoya, Dixon, Wheldon, Carpenter, Foyt, Meira, Allmendinger, Briscoe, Castroneves, Rice, Rahal, Wilson, Hunter-Reay, Vasser, Tracy, Danica, et al. all having driven in the Rolex 24 in recent years it's funny someone saying they have a hard time seeing OW drivers in the race. Mario was even talking about a multi-generational Andretti family entry at one time, although it didn't happen.

You can combine series and driver searches in the photo database if you edit the URLs by hand, although lots of them would just be of the car. Since Danica only got one race in before she was asked to not participate in the Rolex 24 any more there aren't too many photos of her in Grand-Am, but there are some of her actually in the car:
http://www.motorsport.com/photos/select.asp?S=GRANDAM&D=Danica_Patrick

You could replace the "Danica_Patrick" in that URL with any other driver's name, with the underscore between first and last names, to get everything in the database for another driver in Grand-Am if you want, although with Duno running several years in Grand-Am and Dixon driving several times for Ganassi you'll get pages and pages of pictures of the cars with only a few of the drivers.

Milka Duno on the top step of the podium for Grand-Am at Mont-Tremblant in '05 [it was a six-hour race and she had two co-drivers, Andy Wallace and Jan Lammers]:
grandam-2005-mt-eg-0503.jpg
 
thanks for the info. I'm new to racing so I don't know a lot of the history or the different kinds of racing.
 
I'll add that many of the regular pro drivers in sportscars have backgrounds in openwheel road-racing formula as well, from ladder and national series to F1.
 
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