This year I was invited by 686 Motorsports to drive their 2001 BMW 325i at the legendary Daytona Road Course, the very same track driven by Ken Miles, A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Jr., and hundreds of other notable racing drivers. The green flag dropped at 9am and checkered flag was at 11pm, a whole 14 hours of non-stop racing action.
Green Flag
First in our lineup of drivers was Champcar Board of Directors member Rodger Coan, a guest to our team this weekend as he normally is in command of the Burningham Racing Team’s Lexus SC300. Around 30 minutes after the green flag he came on the radio with a high water temperature warning on the dash. He brought the car into our garage and we quickly found that water was spewing out of our overflow hose, indicating extremely high temperatures. It turns our out fan had not kicked on, likely due to a faulty thermostat or coolant sensor. We hard wired the fan to stay on no matter what and after about 30 minutes in the garage, we sent Rodger back on track. With the car running 100% now, we found ourselves extremely far back in the pack with a lot of work to make up. Rodger set some nice laptimes and came in after his two hour stint to swap Sam Collier III into our BMW.
First Half
Sam hopped in our car and continued to set the pace, knocking off positions very quickly bringing us down inside the top 75. With no issues and only a minor off roading done, Sam came in the pits to put me in the car after around 4 hours. I quickly climbed in the car and started my first ever lap around the Daytona Road Course! Coming around turn 3 and 4 for the first time was exhilarating; I ran all the way against the outside wall and saluted with three fingers in honor of Dale Earnhardt. I started out running pretty decent, luckily I have a few thousand laps around the track in iRacing so I quickly came accustom to the track and turn in points. I dropped a few seconds until we started have a fuel pickup issue about halfway through the stint, something that would plague our car for the next 10 hours. Something with our fuel system had caused some sort of back pressure in the motor, resulting in the car skipping with around half a tank of fuel in it. Coming out of the horseshoe with this issue saw almost 2-3 seconds a lap in time loss, so we just had to make it through.
Last Half
The last half of the race saw me getting back in the car around the 10 hour mark. I had probably the worst stint of the day as the sun was just starting to set over the track, creating extremely blinding rays of light in the treacherous infield section. That didn’t seem to slow me down evidentially because I ran the fastest lap of the day during it with a 2:21.293. Matt Trenary and Paul Street closed out the race for us under the lights and we came home with a 23rd place finish, not bad for losing around 45 minutes in the garage and a penalty for passing under yellow (you can’t pass coming out of the pits, who knew!).
Conclusion
Overall, we were very happy with the car’s performance and it was an extremely great weekend with Champcar again. We brought the car home in one piece after a few cars were totaled on the last few laps due to a Mustang blowing a motor, dumping tons of oil onto the backstraight chicane (bus stop). We survived with just a few bumps and bruises from divebombing EC cars and somehow lost our sideskirt in the process, but nothing majorly expensive.
Thanks again to the 686 Motorsports team for inviting me to come drive for them yet again, kicking off their 2023 season. Although that wasn’t the finishing position the car deserves, we look forward to making that up the next race! My next race will be with Mad Fast Autosport’s #200 Miata at Carolina Motorsports Park in June! I’m looking forward to it, till next time!