Finished with Daytona....Thankfully

And frankly, wouldn't want to run it again without at least a roll cage in the car. There is something to be said about the crazy banking at the turns. The first time you go into it a feeling of disorientation is overwhelming. It's as if the car is going to slide down the hill or roll over. Once the car gets up to speed though it's rather normal feeling. Don't even have to turn the wheel much.

The banking really helps top end as well. The GTR's and GT2 were hitting around 170 mph down the front straight. We were going easy on the car and was able to more the max out the speedometer (140 limit). We would estimate our speeds to be aroundf 150 on the front straight. The affects of the lack of aero on the car could definitely be felt at these speeds and the car was a bit unstable under braking going into turn one.

About turn one....that leads us to today's issues. One the first lap of the first session, some debris from the track took out the wire on the front right wheel speed sensor. Tony didn't realize it at the time, but this disabled the ABS system. When he got the car to turn one he started to brake down from 150; very lightly at first to make sure the car was settled, then with increasing pressure. All of a suddend, the rear brakes locked (at 130 mph) and the car spun. Thankfully, Tony, with his masterful driving skills, was able to control the spin well and avoided the tire wall. He finished out the session and still ended up 12 overall. Without the spin, we would have been 6th.

Got the car back in the pits and started looking for issues. Found the problem with the wire and also found that one of our CV boots had a hole in it. Grease was everywhere. We replaced the axle with a spare we had brought along, then found the broken wire and went at it fixing it. Ironically, the 10th place finisher last year (Steve Rankin driving the GTR this year) had sold his car (06 STI) to someone who was spectating at Daytona. We were able "borrow" his wheel speed sensor which got the car up and running again with ABS. We are enternally thankful to him, GreenmarineSVX on the baoards for those who know him, for letting us have the part.

Second session was a bit scary though. We developed a flat spot in the front left tire during the spin in the first session. We found it when fixing the ABS sensor issue and rotated the tire to the rear. We did some parade laps at lunch time and noticed a slight vibration over 100. When Tony got out in the car for the second session the vibration got pretty severe over 110. He still ran it up to 140 or so, but said the dash was shaking so badly he couldn't read the gauges. Luckily, this is the portion of the trip that contains a stop at Tire Rack in GA. We are going to pay them a visit and have them rebalance the wheel for us. We would switch to our spare, but since the spin was our fault and it's not really a safety issue, we can't swap tires.For the second session, someone said we were still running 2:11's or so which should put us close to 5th or 6th for the session.

TB