During the week ending February 10th, drivers, teams and transporters hauled themselves from all over the world to congregate at the annual Daytona 12 Hours for GTP cars, hosted by OATAS. This year, 19 teams would take the start of this gueling test of endurance over 2 classes, and it proved to be one of the most exciting to date, and a perfect way to kick off the 2008 endurance season.
The Renown 4 Racing team set up early in the week having made the short journey from the team's American HQ in St. Cloud, Florida, just 3 hours South of Daytona by road. The team planned to enter one Lights class Mazda 787b (#105 Momo R4R) for team owner Scott Michaels and Pennsylvania's Brendan Kaczmarek, but a late deal with Brazilian Pedro Toledo made a two car effort possible, so the #104 Mazdaspeed R4R car was quickly transported North to join the team mid week. Joining Pedro in the #104 would be Ohio resident Joe Mudrak and 13 year old Brit Sam Michaels.
The JPS France team were another group to ship their cars over early. The French team, consisting of team owner Antoine de Mautor, Davy Decorps, Guillaume Siebert, Lucas Marino, Martin Audran, Phillipe Martinelli and Maxime Mironneu, made up the 3 car team. These three cars would be split between two GTP Saubers (#68 and #69) and one Lights Mazda (#168).
Vader Trophy Racing (VTR) are the favorite team going into any GTP race. Having gone through a perfect season in 2006, these guys are simply a well oiled machine when it comes to these endurance races. Four cars have been entered for the season but only two made the long haul from England to Florida, the #85 VTR2 GTP Jaguar, and the #187 Lights Mazda. Signed up for the #85 were Denmark's Jan Larsen and Norway's Esben Tipple, while the #187 lost lead driver and team owner Richard Dickson due to having a molar removed shortly before the race, leaving Neil Stratton to field the car on his own. Despite this setback, the #187 is expected to fight the two R4R cars for the Lights win.
The main team expected to fight VTR2 for the overall and GTP win is the host team OATAS, who brought two cars to the event, the #11 and #91 GTP Saubers. With quality drivers like team owner Brian Wegner and super-alien Damian Gosztyla, these guys are a force to be reckoned with.
Other GTP entries included brand new team WorldRacing.info, who entered two Saubers (#48 and #49), 36TeamRus who also entered two Saubers (#36 and #37), and combination Team AtlasF1/Ringrace who entered two Saubers (#01 and #22) and two Jaguars (#2 and #10). In the Lights class there was also ISRA's #005 entry and Alaster's #000 making up the 19 car field.
Heavy early week practice was conducted in public by JPS France, Renown 4 Racing, VTR and ISRA. The JPS guys showed that the GTP pace would be well under the 90 second mark, setting times of in the 1:29.5 region around the 3.6 mile road course. R4R and VTR set the Lights pace, with both teams completing hotlaps well below the 1:31 benchmark, while ISRA's mazda was in the 1:32s. Other teams were being cagey, but there where rumours of 1:28s in GTP private practice.

Saturday the 9th dawned and the atmosphere could be cut with a knife, with cars screaming around the track all morning as teams shaved hundreths off laptimes and pitstops, although most minds preyed on the challenge of completing 12 hours and staying at - or getting to - the top of the tree.
By 11:40am EST, the climax arrived, and qualifying was to begin.
OATAS proved they possesed the speed that had been feared, as the team locked out the front row, with Damian Gosztyla setting a blistering 1:29.068 in qualifying. JPS threw in the first suprise by outqualifying VTR2 with both their cars, and Jan Larsen lined up 5th behind the #68 and #69. These four cars were all very close in qualifying, setting laps in the low 1:30 range.
On pole in Lights and 6th overall was Scott Michaels in the #105 on a 1:30.7. The 4th row was occupied by the first 36TeamRus Sauber (1:30.9) and the Mazdaspeed R4R 787b (1:31.7). Rounding out the top 10 was the #01 Team AtlasF1/Ringrace Sauber, followed by the #187 VTR4 Mazda.
Then there was the 10 minute warmup session, and after final checks and pitstop practices it was time to go. Nobody was truely ready, but nobody wanted to wait, the start couldn't come soon enough....

As the green flag dropped the crowd roared as Jan Larsen in the Jaguar immediatley dived around the outside of Antoine de Matour's JPS France #69 Sauber in turn one to take over 4th position. Jan described his thoughts, "Someone said 'wtf are you doing?!' in the back of my head, but someone else said 'shut up and go for it!', so I did. Worked a charm!" This move would set the tone for the first hour, as positions 2nd through 5th battled door to door to sort out the early leaderboard, while watching Damian Gosztyla drive off into the sunset. "If someone ever has the strange idea to write a history of Simracing, he ought to take good notice of the first hour of this race, and especially the battle for second between four cars, all in one second for more than 20 laps, swapping position almost every lap." as de Mautor described it. Unfortunatley, as happens so often in these long races, two cars were left behind as the #22 and #2 AtlasF1/Ringrace cars were stranded in the pits before even taking the start. The #22 had problems with the officials as it seems the team were attempting to start with a chassis that didn't match the one that was entered, and this logistical problem saw them start well back from the field. The #2 suffered from an irritating mechanical lockup that the team struggled well into the race to get going, whle also co-ordinating their other cars and the paperwork issue for the #22.
Meanwhile, Lights class leader Scott Michaels started out with a consistend pace and was easily holding on to 6th. Further back, the 7th place starting 36TeamRus had a nervous early spin which caused Pedro Toledo in the #104 Mazdaspeed car to spin off in avoidance, losing them 2nd in class to Neil Stratton's VTR4. This battle would rage similar to the GTP class, with these two cars trying to gain the higher ground on eachother, while they could do nothing about the #105, Scott Michaels having a clean first stint to drive off into the lead. "The start probably couldn't have gone more perfectly" Scott recalls, "I got to watch Jan pull a pretty crazy move around the outside at T1, then saw the guys infront pull away, and the guys behind fall back. After 10 laps I was in the middle of a 30 second gap and all on my own! I had a perfect 3 hour stint, no spins, no contact, and by the end I was averaging low 1:30s with a fastest lap of 1:30.1, which I was pretty happy with."

By the three hour mark the order at the front of GTP was:
1. #11 OATAS
2. #85 VTR2
3. #68 JPS France
4. #91 OATAS
5. #69 JPS France

The #11 was already a few laps ahead of the other 4 who were all on the same lap, but way ahead of the rest of the GTP runners.

While in the Lights class:
1. #105 Momo R4R
2. #104 Mazdaspeed R4R
3. #187 VTR4
4. #005 ISRA
5. #168 JPS France

At this point Momo R4R had opened a 3 lap lead ahead of Mazdaspeed R4R, and 4 laps over VTR4, with ISRA, JPS France and Alaster dropping further and further away from the lead.
Conditions wouldn't stay so serene for the R4R boys though. After 3 hours, with only a few laps to go in his stint, Pedro Toledo lost 2nd and 3rd gears in the Mazdaspeed car. When Sam Michaels took over the car was a horrible drive and the team quickly lost 2nd place and dropped back from VTR4. Then, shortly after Michaels switched to Kaczmarek, the #105 car lost 2nd gear, and then was thrown into the barriers when JPS France 69 span right infront, and the car needed to be towed back to the pits for repairs. "Brendan was very fast in the infield, but I'd managed to overtake him on the oval, and then he was very close to me, and under pressure I made a mistake, began to spin exiting the horseshoe, and as we too close he hit me" De Matour explains, "what I'm sure about is that if he had kept a slightly longest distance within him and me, he would have avoid my spinning car." In all this the #105 lost the lead, and damage meant it was 2 to 3 seconds off the pace, so catching the VTR car was slow and difficult work.
Meanwhile in GTP, Jan Larsen in VTR2 managed to close up enough on the #11 to hand the car to Esben Tipple less than half a minute from the lead. But towards the end of his stint, Esben made a big mistake coming out of the chicane to end the lap and destroyed the Jaguar's right front suspension. The #91 and #68 had already retired, and the #69 had run into a few issues, so Esben had enough of a buffer behind to hold on to 2nd, but the win was slipping further and further out of reach as the mechanics toiled to change the supspension. All in all about 4 laps were lost.
As if VTR weren't having a bad enough time, shortly after the half way mark was passed the VTR4 car (still driven by Neil Stratton) ran into engine problems and was stuck out at the turn 5 horseshoe. The exhausted Stratton managed to get the car towed back to the pits, but there was nothing the mechanics could do, the engine was done, the car was out.
This misfortune had shortly followed a similar problem for the ISRA and Alaster cars, leaving only 3 cars in the Lights class, the two R4R cars way out ahead of the #168 JPS France car which was slowly dieing. So by the 7 hour mark the Lights class was all but over.
But things in GTP handn't quite settled down, and there was one more twist in the tail. At around 8 hours, the race leading #11 OATAS car suffered a major technical fault, causing it to spear off the track at high speed in the kink on the infield. The race marshals immediatley deemed the car too unsafe to drive and the car was instantly retired from a 4 lap lead. The OATAS crew were devistated but there was nothing that could be done, and the win was handed to VTR2 on a silver platter, as long as they could get to the finish.

The running order at the 9 hour mark read:
1. #85 VTR2
2. #69 JPS France
3. #105 Momo R4R
4. #01 AtlasF1/Ringrace
5. #10 AtlasF1/Ringrace
6. #104 Mazdaspeed R4R
7. #49 WorldRacing.info
8. #168 JPS France

In the final 3 hours little changed, apart from a complete disaster for the two AtlasF1/Ringrace cars. The #10 suffered a series of small gitches that dropped them from 5th to 6th overall, although they stayed 4th in GTP. The bigger problem was with the #01, which unfortunatley suffered a complete brake failure in the 215mph braking area for the 80mph Turn 1... needless to say, the car was destroyed and the team was forced to give up a hard earned 3rd position, leaving the bottom step of the podium open for the unlikely WorldRacing.info crew to gladly accept. The JPS France #168 also ended up retiring, but with nobody left in class to pass them, they were still classified in 3rd and got to stand on the bottom step of the podium.
The Momo R4R crew had an interesting final few hours too, as Brendan Kaczmarek showed up 2 hours late for his final stint, which resulted in a 5 hour stint for Scott! "I was all too happy to jump out and head off to bed!" Scott said in the morning.

So possibly the toughest Daytona 12 Hours rolls to a close, and all that's left to do is congratulate the victors and the finishers. For them and the rest, its time to move on to preparation for the next round, the 6 Hours of Mexico City, to take place on the 3rd of March.