Daytona Rolex 04/02/2001   Andy Wallace The Best Job In The World   Andy Wallace will be contributing a regular column for TotalMotorSport. He begins with the month of January, and into February for the Rolex 24, and provides a fascinating insight into racing in possibly the tougher of the two 24 hour races. Let the antics begin. I have somehow managed to set up quite a hectic year for myself, hopefully having loads of fun on the way and only getting into minimal amounts of trouble. I spent Christmas in England, but was back in the US on January 1, spending a day or so in North Carolina before flying down to Daytona for the Test Days. November and December were already hectic months, even without any racing, because of the regular phone calls to and from Dyson, Champion and Bentley, etc. etc. With three drives now lined up for this year, it's going to be one of my busiest seasons ever, but as a driver, you need to keep driving to stay sharp. Two of the drives sort of overlapped at the Test Days - Butch, James and I were all present for the Daytona Test, so it made sense to use that time to have the Bentley driver photos done, before we all went to Detroit for the official launch event. Brooksie was taking the photos, so we knew that would go smoothly, but there was one incident involving James that I'd love to tell you about. I've never seen such a bad piece of driving! Perhaps we'd better wait until a later column though... Back at the Tests, driving Thetford / Norcold / Dyson Racing’s number 16 car, it was just by chance that I happened to be in the car when it set the quickest time. The three of us were very happy with the car, and for the most part it ran trouble free. These seven or eight sessions are really the start of the Daytona 24 Hours build up. As I might be able to explain later, when you get to the race meeting itself, it's too late to start finding a set-up. If you turn up unprepared on the Thursday of race week, it's too late - it just becomes a huge bunfight. The handling of the car at the Tests was superb though. I think Pat (Smith, Team Manager) commented on the new chassis in the race material, didn't he? It's excellent, the best Riley & Scott we've ever driven. I can’t wait to drive the Mklll C. We did have one problem though, which ironically was with the engine. It blew after two hours running. The guys fitted an old 5.5, and we set the best time with that, but running with the restrictors from the six litre - so we were down on power relative to what we could have had. We knew we were in good shape, and we hadn't pushed hard for a whole lap, not once. So that was the Dyson drive out of the way for a while. I had a day off before travelling to Detroit. Whew! Although the Motor Show was hard work, it was a lot of fun. I hadn't met the Bentley people before, and we had to rehearse the launch into the night to make sure we absolutely had it right, this being the first time stripping for all of us, but more of that later. Tony Gott, the Chief Executive, was to make the speech, with the Speed 8 sitting there under a silk cloth. He began by explaining that the Speed 6s had won Le Mans in the twenties, and continued that the drivers may have looked like this.......at this point, Wallace / Weaver / Leitzinger popped out from behind the screen, sporting 1920s style white boiler suits! We wore leather flying caps, goggles, we had suede lapels on the boiler suits, brown leather belts, even yellow, silk neckerchiefs! And yes, the silk around their necks was actually functional. Apparently it reduced the chafing on the necks of the drivers. It just happened to increase their dashing image as well. Maybe the new Bentley boys should try the same trick. Then Tony explained that Bentley are coming back to Le Mans, which was our cue to rip off the goggles, belts, scarves and boiler suits - held together with velcro for a quick exit. This ordinarily would have been most embarrassing. However, underneath, we were sporting the full, new 2001 Bentley race suits of course. The cover came off the gleaming Speed 8, and that was the launch. Trouble was with us lot, we had to practise it until 1 am to get it right. The launch itself was at 8.20 the next morning, so we wondered if there would be many people there, but there were of course, as this is Bentley we’re talking about. It all went off perfectly. The car is fantastic. It's a ground up new car, and everything fits perfectly. The detail on it is just like a road Bentley. Really impressive. RTN spent 18 months developing the old R8C, but then they built an entirely new car. You know, only the front wheels are the same as on the R8C, but nothing else fits, nothing at all. I had a couple of days off after Detroit, but it's never time off completely. There's always phone calls going on all the time, plus 'winter testing' of this 39 year old body, trying to hone it to perfection. I'm a lot fitter than Butch Leitzinger of course (mentioned for Butch's benefit, as he walked into the trailer. Ed.) Next stop was Champion Audi at Pompano Beach, to see Dave Maraj. It was the first time I had seen Champion’s Porsche and Audi Showrooms and the race workshop. Very impressive to say the least. I had to go back two days later, but I really did get some time off after that - although I did a test for Riley & Scott at Moroso Park on the 22nd. 'Time off' means work in the gym, plus working on my website link. Please bear with me on this one, as it takes me forever to make the updates! Then we arrived here for the race meeting. I received my new race suit, and hastily taped over the Stars and Stripes that had mistakenly appeared on the waistband. James had the first hour in the car, but with Qualifying due on Thursday afternoon, there wasn't much time for Butch and I to settle in. Butch did a 1:58 in the wet, I jumped in and matched his time, James did a few more laps, and then he was away in Qualifying. Typical James, he put it on pole. With a planned engine change to come, what did James say? - we could just womble about for the rest of Practice and Qualifying? Thursday's time set the front row of the grid, so we were ready. The rest of them had to worry about the weather on Friday. Just like Le Mans (Andy ‘reunited’ with two of the factory 962s that he defeated in 1988), you don't get many laps in at Daytona during the build-up. You get more laps in each hour than at Le Mans, but it's the same kind of fight to be ready if you're not on the ball. One of the many differences is that at Le Mans, the shock is travelling that quickly. Here, the shock is travelling that quickly among all the traffic. I'll explain what I mean....... There were so many incidents in the race......I started counting how many people spun in front of me, but I lost track when I got to eight. There were loads more than that. I had some great dices though. The first was with David (Brabham) in the Ferrari. It was damp at the start of my stint, and I think I told you he was quicker on the straight. I could get alongside out of the slow stuff, but he had more power. If he got held up in traffic, I could try to get under him on the brakes but it was hard to make it stick. We changed places three or four times, but once I finally extended a gap I could pull away. We were in and out of the slow cars a lot - it's the groups that cause the biggest problems. If you catch four or five cars together you know you've got to get past very quickly. But if they block you on one or both sides, it can make it difficult. You have to make sure the Ferrari can't get past in all the excitement! You have to be so careful, but it's highly enjoyable racing. It's no good getting upset with the slower cars, you have to use them to your advantage. I had an equally interesting dice with Eric van de Poele - even better because it lasted longer. I’ve known Eric a long time and he’s great to race with, hard but fair. We spent many laps slipstreaming past each other. On one occasion, our #16 was a lap up, and going into Turn 1, he made me go the long way round, easing me out wide.....so I got on the brakes and went up the inside at the last possible moment! You know who you can trust, but you daren't risk a crash in a 24 hour race. I know that James and Butch are going to bring the car back each time. They are both very experienced long distance drivers. In short races you sometimes have to take big risks, but not in the long ones. My last dice was with Jack Baldwin in the 74 car. He was way quicker than us on the straight; wherever I was, he would blitz by me. I could hold him on acceleration through the gears, but he would blow by on top speed. I made it stick a couple of times, but we got into traffic and he was right there again. At the end of one stint, the pedals got a bit slippery. I thought it was water, because it wasn't much at all. It got worse for James. The problem turned out to be a leaky union on the (powered) steering rack. When Butch took over, James explained how to get round it. He was using his left foot on the throttle, and simultaneously wiping his right foot on his left leg. Then he would brake with his right. Sure enough, he showed me after that stint - all down his left leg was oil from his right foot. He nearly missed his braking a couple of times, so that was the time to change it. The iron brakes we have to use here only last about a third of the race. With carbon brakes like we use at Le Mans and the ALMS, the pedal height doesn't change with wear. With iron, it just gets longer and longer. After six or seven hours, it can be so long, you can miss the throttle on the downshifts - but you don't want to change the pads too soon, otherwise you might have to make an extra pad change late in the race. I can’t for the life of me understand why Grand Am insists on making us all use these outdated iron brakes (at least for the SR1 Prototype class). The cost argument doesn’t wash any more; carbon brakes easily last a whole 24 hour race and still have enough meat left on them to do some serious testing afterwards. Iron brakes are not cheap either, especially when you have to use multiple sets of them just to complete the Rolex 24! We had one seemingly minor problem on the car, but it was one that had a fairly unpleasant outcome. During a routine stop, we decided to check the brakes for wear. They were still OK so the same wheels were put back on. There was a lot of rubber pick-up on the inside of the rims. Some of this may have come off during the brake check, or a wheel was perhaps replaced in a different position. In my next stint, I inherited a terrible vibration through the car. I got on the radio to explain what I was suffering. I was sure it wasn't a puncture, and said that I'd be OK until the end of my stint, later partly regretting that decision. The vibration was wheel speed related. On the straight it was so bad, I couldn't see the track - or rather I could see two of them. When I came up on a Porsche, there were two of them. The vibration produced gas in my stomach, so I was burping two or three times a lap to get rid of it. Eventually, I started being sick into my balaclava. Not nice. In later stints we had a couple of punctures, and they're quite difficult to feel in the wet. I had a big slide at Turn 1, and when that happens you wonder if it was oil, or was I too hard on the throttle? At the second hairpin and the fast left, I had a more slides, and because it was the right rear that was going down, I had a huge one onto the banking. Then a big diagonal wobble at the Bus Stop. Then I knew it had to be a puncture, 'PAT, I'M COMING IN.' I only had one contact with another car, one of the Porsches (light blue, I think). If you catch a car in the middle of the Bus Stop, the choice is to wait behind, lose time through the second part, and lose time all the way round the banking towards Turn 1 because your exit speed is down. The alternative is to nail the slow car in the middle of the Bus Stop Chicane, by dropping down into 2nd gear. You still lose a bit as you enter the last part of the chicane on the wrong line, but you get held up for less time and you keep more momentum this way. It’s a tricky manoeuvre, but one you do multiple times during the race, and it usually works if you do it right! On this occasion, the slower car wasn’t quite as slow as I had anticipated. I didn’t quite manage to make a clean pass, but I have to say that I was actually past the car in that my rear wheels were level with the centre of the slow car. I was happy that I had made it past in time, but to my amazement the driver turned in on me and made contact with the side of my Riley & Scott. The impact turned my car left and required correction PDQ, but no harm was done. You can't blame the traffic; you mustn't put yourself in that position. On a bad lap, you can pass three cars on full throttle up to Turn 1, another at Turn 1 itself, one after Turn 1, two under brakes for the first Horseshoe, three up to the fast left, another two into the second Horseshoe, another onto the banking, three along the back straight, two under brakes for the Bus Stop and another two in the Chicane itself. That can be 20 or more on a bad lap. On a good lap it can be as few as two. You're making decisions all the time. They try to anticipate you, you anticipate them, and sometimes you meet in the middle. They swerve, then swerve back. That's what it's like for 24 hours - or in our case, 21 hours. The rain made it a lot tougher mentally. We use visor tear offs, but the water gets between the layers, so you tend to tear them off almost immediately. But as soon as you get in traffic, you get crap on the visor. You can't do much at speed, but when you're in the slow stuff, you can carefully wipe one finger across the visor. That lasts for two or three corners until it gets dirty again. At speed when it's bad, I sometimes put my fist up in front of my face, and try to drag a knuckle sized hole in the dirt, then you can see the track again, well momentarily. I was in the motorhome on Sunday morning, talking to James. Butch was reeling off the laps, all I had to worry about was whether or not to have another bowl of cornflakes! We'd decided to knock off 200 revs, we wouldn't race with anyone, all we had to do was lap faster than the Corvettes and we'd at least preserve our lead. After shifting, we were being very gentle getting back on the throttle, we were coasting on the brakes. Then someone outside said there was a problem. We could see Butch across at Turn 2. News came through that there was a hole in the engine block. Butch walked back. He couldn't say anything for ages. What's really annoying is that it was in the bag. You only get one chance a year at this thing. Oh well, as they say, "THAT'S RACING"!!! James suggested that we should torch the motorhome to make us feel better. I think he was joking! It was especially disappointing for the Thetford / Norcold / Dyson Racing Team. They really did a magnificent job, and it would have been nice to repay them with a victory – next time perhaps? Despite the disappointment, we drivers have still got the best job in the world. We are so privileged to be able to race these machines. It's you lot in the press room who've drawn the short straw. More from Andy after Texas, and that debut in the Champion Audi. Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport