Video Post: Brumos at Daytona, from the eyes of Leh Keen

The Porsche channel on Youtube remains one of my favorites. Unique among car manufacturers, or at least it seems, they have a much more personal sort of approach to content. Quirky, different and refreshingly not stuffy or snooty, it's a sure-fire bet for some entertaining motorsport videos...

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Pic Post: The G&W Jenniferfund RSR

Our intrepid reporter on the inside of most things Porsche, Robert from Lufteknic Porsche, sent these pics over to me last week, of the Jenniferfund / G&W Motorsports 993 RSR. My favorite 993, and a car significant to both Robert and myself, in its way.  You see, Robert was crewing for G&W Motorsports back in 2000, and this car placed 3rd in the GTU class that year - the little aircooled 911 that could. After the vast majority of the then-new 996 GT3Rs dropped like flies with engine failure after engine failure, this little Porsche kept on going. Of course, after 24 hours of battle on the track it looked a bit different...

'Porsche' powered DP wins Rolex 24, Mazda takes GT

As I alluded to in my recent post about the Continental Sports Car Challenge, I have little to no love for Grand Am's performance-neutered classes in the Rolex series. I think the DP cars are ugly, uninspiring, and are generally the result of trying to apply a template that may work elsewhere (NASCAR's various oval series), but has no place in a top-tier championship. That said, Grand Am has what was once one of the most prestigious endurance racing events in the world under its jurisdiction, the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

So despite their best efforts to drag sports car racing back into the past, in terms of chassis and engine tech, Grand Am still has one event a year which is a little bit exciting and worth attending. This year the entry list was down compared to years past (when I was going back in the early aughts the field was into the high 70s and low 80s in terms of car counts), but the teams appeared to be as pumped as ever, and the result was quite a race.



A Riley chassis, powered by a Porsche Cayenne V8 which was not at all endorsed by the factory, somehow managed to overcome all the odds to take the overall and DP class win. The engine is street-derived, and despite Action Express being an offshoot of the Brumos team, it was not expected to win with all the other 'known quantities' at the top of the field. So I suppose Porsche won, but then since this was done without Porsche's blessing, who knows if they will acknowledge the win at all. Something tells me the marketing department will manage to put it in the headlines, even if they didn't originally want to make it so. Best thing about the win: Mike Rockenfeller played a key part in the victory and got a 24 hour win.



The GT class is one in which you pretty much expect a Porsche 911 to win. They always do, or used to anyways, as this year a tube-framed 'Mazda RX8' managed to stomp the formidable foes from The Racers Group, Flying Lizard, and the BMWs of Turner to take the GT class win. The winning 'RX8' was the #70 from SpeedSource Castrol Syntec. I feel about the same about tube frame racers as I do about the Daytona Prototypes, but damn that rotary sounded good screaming around the banking. Kudos to Mazda for getting the job done, and hey, at least they sounded good and looked good while winning. You can't count out the importance of that. In my opinion, winning is only worth doing with style...

Speed TV's race recap

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Porsche pic post, gigantor sized

The other day I received an email from Josh of some super, super old slide scans from back in the day. We're talking VW scene circa 1993. It may as well be an art exhibit this stuff is so cool. Vintage, amazing, awesome stuff. BUT he made me promise not to post any of it until he is done scanning all of them.



So, I decided to dust off my scanner and finish doing a job I started a few months back, which is scanning in the remainder of the pictures I took at the 2000 Daytona 24 hours. Some of these I had scanned in and posted about previously, but many I had not. Some of those pictures which I already posted I have re-scanned and uploaded to Flickr in a larger size. There are still some left behind, but not many.

Before...

After...

For this round I concentrated on the Porsche pics, as this race was an extremely significant one with regards to modern Porsche race cars. This was the big introduction of the 996 GT3R, the first water cooled customer GT from Porsche, and one which started the championship winning tradition of the GT3 R / RSR which is still going strong today.

Before...(remember this car when you see the last picture)

Although Porsche did take first through third in the GTU (aka GT2) category, it was not without casualties. Renowned for their reliability, most of the new GT3R's were anything but. Apparently the new sand-cast crankcases were not cleaned before assembly, resulting in sand running through the engines' cooling systems and clogging various key passageways and waterpumps, causing failure, after failure, after failure. Some managed to escape, but not many. To say they most all looked the worse for wear is an understatement...



Robert from Lufteknic was crewing for the number 81 G&W Motorsports car, with an all-star driver line up they were over 10 laps ahead up until around 7:30 am, when the old engine went boom and that was all she wrote.

Before...

Diagnosis...

Prognosis...

Robert is also the man behind GT3R.com, which will continue to grow into a reference for years to come. After all, these old 996s are practically vintage now and it would make sense to begin a chassis database to track where all these incredible machines have ended up.



One of the prototype GT3Rs was in attendance, (Number 7 Redbull sponsored) and made it through the night without any serious problems, at least not from the engine. This model used a prototype 3.2 liter unit, essentially a 962 / GT1 motor but with high compression and optimized for a non turbo application. Obviously this one avoided the sand issue.



For me, this is almost the ultimate example of a true GT racer. Highly modified for the track, yet still retaining many of the clues from the street car which it is based upon. And perhaps best of all, no "driver aids" as they call them.



No sequential gearbox, no ABS, and no traction control. This is a car which took real skill in piloting around the banks of Daytona at 175mph. With everyone looking to make racing cheaper these days, how about that? Take off all the fancy electronics and the let the drivers duke it out with real skill.



Anyways, like I said all the new uploads are over in the Flickr account in mondo-size, so please feel free to go over and take a peek at some of Porsche Motorsport history....

Wolfsburg Rennsport FLICKR set.

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After....

Expand your mind, man

I'm all for learning new things. It's like I always say, if you're not learning something new you're just getting dumber. (or is it more dumb? I never claimed to be an English teacher) Also, I have made no secret of the fact I like sports car and endurance racing in general. One of the cooler sites around, for those who are technically minded anyways, is Mulsanne's Corner, which centers around sports prototype / Le Mans racers in the LMP categories. Much of the site is dedicated to aerodynamics and the details of car design, and it's endlessly fascinating to a nerd like myself. The how's and why's of a new car, flaws that are never discussed until years after the fact, an inside look at a lot of the really classic cars from the last 20 plus years. There are interviews with drivers, designers, and multiple pages on nearly every car you can think of....and probably some you've never even seen!

I've been checking out the site for a few months, and finally my curiousity has gotten the best of me and I bought a book about aerodynamics. I want to know exactly HOW those aero add-ons work, and why I should or shouldn't use similar devices on my street car. Don't think I'm going to go around putting ridiculous spoilers and rear diffusers on my Mk3, or even the Scirocco, but it would be interesting to put some of this stuff to the test. Maybe those DTM splitters from back in the 90's will make the front end stick more...who knows? I highly recommend checking out Mullsanne Mike's page...it's a good read.

So I decided, since I was talking about WSC / LMP sports prototypes, why not drag out the old photo album from the 2000 Rolex 23 at Daytona, scan in some pics, you know, just for the post? Well...I got a little carried away and I scanned in a ton of pics, only a few of which are posted here. Is that an Enron sticker? Probably so, since the Risi team is based in Texas...

Check out the Wolfsburg Rennsport Flickr Page for the full set. Please. Enjoy, I spent a lot of time with the damn scanner tonight...Some of the cars, such as the short-lived Cadillac LMP project, are probably fairly rare to see, and I was happy to add to the few that are around of that car while it actually raced.

The rest, such as the Ferrari 333SP, are more readily uncovered, but it makes for a nice little stroll down memory lane. Cool stuff abounded at the older Daytona races...before they threw out the real race cars and made it an exercise in boring, with ugly spec racers taking to the high banks. Me? I'll take something like this Porsche 917 any day of the week. (this car was the Le Mans winner in 1970...)

I suppose there are some times when the good old days really were better...

_WRS

Wolfsburg Rennsport Flickr Page