Home » Blog » Allan's Blog » Daytona confirmation sees in the New Year perfectly... Testing times in Florida... Autosport Show as enjoyable as ever

14 January 2008 | Posted in Allan's Blog

My first newsletter of the year is being written in a Chinese restaurant near London Heathrow airport. I’m on my way back home to Monaco after spending the past couple of days at the Autosport International Show at the NEC near Birmingham.

Apologies for the shortness of this particular update but if I miss the last flight out to Nice tonight, Kelly and Finlay will be particularly unimpressed . . .

Firstly, I hope that you had an enjoyable New Year break... I had a relaxing time until my birthday when the 2008 season started to work into my festivities quite quickly. I received an e-mail from my Audi Sport team-mate Lucas Luhr and subsequently my management company telephoned me on the subject of the Daytona 24 Hours which is staged later this month (26-27 Jan).

Daytona is a race I’ve had a lot of interest in for a number of years. In fact I raced there for the first time 10 years ago, finishing second overall and first in class. I’ve been back on a couple of occasions since then to try and add this prestigious race to my CV.

I had not anticipated doing this year’s event until Lucas’s e-mail on my birthday but everything was quickly confirmed and I’ll be driving a Riley Pontiac with Lucas, fellow Audi Sport driver Mike Rockenfeller plus American gentlemen racer Henri Zogaib.

It’s a one-off race with the SAMAX team, coincidentally based just around the corner from Champion Racing’s impressive Audi raceshop in Pompano Beach. With Lucas and Mike, who I obviously know very well, plus Henri, and the SAMAX squad who achieved second place in last year’s corresponding race, I feel it’s a very competitive package.

It is an opportunity I couldn’t walk away from and having spent a couple of days in negotiations and looking at the logistics of doing the race, at around 7pm on 31 December, the agreement was finalized so it was a nice way to bring in the New Year. Kelly, Finlay and I went out with some friends afterwards in Monaco and then came back to our apartment and watched from the roof fireworks being set off around the Principality. Finlay went to bed while Kelly and I watched SKY News on TV waiting for Big Ben’s chimes to officially herald the start of 2008.

On 3 January I flew to Florida to drive in a three-day test at the Daytona International Speedway to prepare for the 46th running of the Rolex sponsored race – oh, and by the way, that’s another reason for doing the race – I want a Rolex watch which the drivers of the winning car all receive!

A Daytona Prototype is a very different sportscar from the Audi R10 TDI for example. The SAMAX Riley Pontiac has less power, around 500bhp, a lot less grip from the standard control Pirelli tyres, it features steel disc brakes and not carbon ones I’m used to, plus a standard sequential gearshift and not the paddle shift I use in the Audi.

So from a driving perspective, it was a little like moving back a few years when I drove it for the first time. But pretty quickly I was into a reasonable groove and with Lucas and Mike having done a couple of seasons in the category, we were all working pretty well by the end of the test.

Grand-Am is very much a restricted formula. There aren’t any technical innovations, and no big manufacturer budgets allowed. This means you’re all working with the same product basically. The two Chip Ganassi Racing cars were very quick in the test, one of which sees my old friend Dario Franchitti behind the wheel prior to his NASCAR season. Wayne Taylor’s SunTrust Pontiac Riley was also on the pace, as we were, but I think up to 10 DPs will be contenders for race honours come a week on Sunday.

Although Daytona is a 24 hour sportscar race, just like Le Mans, it’s very different from the one in France. Le Mans is in June so you have a night time period of around eight hours. At Daytona, darkness will last around 12-13 hours. However the Daytona track features a lot of floodlighting, especially around the oval sections. Another element that is a big factor is that there will be around 70 cars taking the start on Saturday afternoon, 1.30pm local so 6.30pm for you guys back in the UK. The circuit is just over 3.5-miles long which means you’re overtaking every single lap, at least five or six cars per lap. So it’s a “busy” race in this respect and the race can be lost by contacting another car, getting stuck behind back markers or not being quick enough in traffic. Sheer speed is not of ultimate importance once the race starts although for sure it’s nice to have available if required in the final few hours on Sunday afternoon.

So, in summary, we’re looking pretty good going into the race but you cannot predict anything in a 24 Hour race – we’ll give it our best shot and see what happens.

Obviously the race is being shown on TV in the States but I understand Eurosport will show something but I’ll get you more information a little nearer the time and post it on my website. Additionally, “live timing and scoring” can be accessed at: http://www.grand-am.com/Events/Event.asp?ID=207 – there, you have no excuses!

From Daytona I’ll head straight to Sebring for the season’s first official public test with the American Le Mans Series staging the Wheels Down test the following week. It’ll give us an idea of how teams, like Porsche and Acura, have progressed over the winter but also we should get a little sniff of what Peugeot have been up to as the French team also plan to be present for the first time at Sebring, in fact on American soil, with its diesel prototype. I’m sure that we’ll be looking at them just as much as they’ll be looking at us.

I have to say that I think 2008 will be a very, very exciting season – whether it in sportscar racing in America or Europe, or indeed any category around the world. Everyone is at such a high level – there are no bad manufacturers, no bad teams, and we’re all fighting for that last little bit. But I certainly hope the Vorsprung durch technik of Audi allows us to be successful again this year.

The Autosport International Show is always enjoyable. It’s a great opportunity to see a lot of friends from racing, and of course fans, in a relaxed atmosphere. After heading home from Florida, I went back home to Monaco for a couple of days before heading for Birmingham on Thursday. I was at the NEC on Friday afternoon competing in a charity kart event for David Brabham then opened the show yesterday (Sunday 13 Jan). Crikey me, the weather – especially on Friday evening when I left the show was terrible with many roads closed due to floods – thank goodness for quattro permanent four-wheel-drive.

I was half considering going to watch Nottingham Forest, my “second” football team (behind Celtic of course), on Saturday but must be honest, that having gone for a run on Saturday morning, couldn’t get too excited about sitting in a stand for almost a couple of hours getting frozen. A little bit of shopping in Leamington Spa and then Solihull was much more appealing.

Ahhhhh, if I want to catch that flight home, I must dash . . . we’ll speak again after Daytona and the Sebring test.

All the best, Allan


You can listen to Allan's blog on the podcast section of www.allanmcnish.com. Log on to http://www.allanmcnish.com/output/podcasts.asp

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