Success – Daytona 24 Hours 2012


Congratulations to Predator/Alegra Racing on their finish at this year’s Rolex Daytona 24 Hour race in the number 50+ Riley Daytona Prototype.

I drove over to Daytona on Saturday morning to watch the pre-race festivities and was frankly astonished to see the number of spectators who turned out to watch the great race. Normally, the Daytona 24 Hours has always been a bit of an “in” secret amongst road racing enthusiasts but now, the secret is out! The infield was completely sold out and I saw people in the grandstands looking for seats before the start.

This being the fiftieth anniversary of the race, 11 a.m. saw a wonderful field of previous winners take to the track for the “24 Minutes of Daytona”, and amongst them were the “Kreepy Krawly”-sponsored March 83G that won the 1984 event, John Paul’s JLP-3 Porsche 935 that won in 1982, Preston Henn’s “Swap Shop” 935 that won in 1981 and many others, all assembled by Tim Pendergast; well done Tim!

With ninety minutes to go, I found the lads at Predator/Alegra and amongst them was my friend George Tuma, who I’d been driving with in CER races in Europe in his 1974 RSR and we swapped many happy memories over a quick lunch. All was then high excitement as a group photograph was taken and the BMW-engined Riley was pushed down pit lane to its starting position, eleventh on the grid, courtesy of Jim Pace’s fine driving. He told me: “There was quite a lot of traffic out there, so I stayed on the conservative side...”

With half an hour to go, I walked over to the horseshoe to watch the start and, after four laps were gone, Jim was settled into a steady thirteenth overall and I left to drive home and watch it on the television.

All was well until halfway through the night when, according to David Hinton: “Elliott Forbes-Robinson was driving when he got caught up in someone else’s accident while exiting the chicane. The impact at the side didn’t feel bad but of course he came straight into the pits. It looked as if the damage was just minor bodywork stuff and we sent him out again but twenty minutes later, the rear axle broke due to the severity of the hit and we had to take the car back to the garage for repairs. We had a complete rear end, gearbox with rear suspension and even wheels mounted and the suspension already set, so we changed the whole rear end, which took us about thirty-five minutes”.

From then on the old (2007) BMW-engined Riley ran like a train to the end and Jim Pace, Elliot Forbes-Robinson, Brian Johnson, Carlos de Quesada (the car’s owner) and Byron Defoor drove it with no problems to finish twenty-sixth overall, twelfth in class, a great achievement in a year that saw a true game change with the introduction of the “new look” Daytona Prototypes, with their smaller, sleeker cabins. As well, it has to be noted that a new engine by Ford powered the first and second placed cars, and those cars were demonstrably faster than the previously dominant Chevrolet-engined cars of such as the lauded Ganassi team.

In the past, many of the entries at Daytona have consisted of club racing amateurs getting together for their one big long distance race of the year but this year, I detected that the standard of the entry has gone up. Quite frankly, unless you now have a new car and four top class professional drivers, you’re not going to win.

Looking at the GT field, the variety of the forty-two cars entered was great, with Audi with their new R8 racer, seemingly hordes of Porsche 911s (no change there!), Ferrari 458s, Corvettes and Camaros. There were just fourteen Daytona prototypes entered.

So we have a “Blue Riband” 24 Hour race that, despite the miserable economy, is doing okay. It will be interesting to see if the vastly increased number of spectators attending keeps up next year but whether it does or not, my friends at Predator/Alegra did a great job to get their car running strongly to the end. Can’t wait for next year!