24 Hours Of Daytona

Wow what a finish. Its great waching them slug it out right down to the wire. I wish that there had been more car in the race but still it was a great event. Can't wait tell our ICSCC 6 hour enduro at PR in March. Its fun to watch but way funner to drive in an enduro. Hope to see some of you there. If you show up come by the #3 pit and cheer on the Rabbit.

The field was smaller, but the action was just as good. The end of the race was amazing. We watched the last 45 minutes or so and had timing and scoring on Rob's iPhone. Four cars within sight of each other after 23-1/2 hours? That's nuts.

Not sure how much it was covered on TV, but in the closing moments the third-place GT Porsche (white 911, No. 33) ducked into the pits to remove a damaged rear bumper. Lots of action all around.

My throat is totally shot, too.

It was historic with Donohue and Porsche and Brumos and with 4 cars on the leading lap and like what David said, after 23-1/2 hours? it was just an awsome race and an awsome finish, Porsche sweep, it was cool to see Haywood, Redman, Valentine, etc. and the great vintage footage with Hobbs, great commentary. Great racing, if not the best, love the Rolex Grand Am.

hey I do got to give Speed credit, 16 hours of coverage, well one hour on fox but, I watched all 16 hours, if they would have just shown it all or had live streaming, I would have watched all 24.

what from screaming? you're lucky you got to BE there, because your with GRM, man I want to be with GRM... Did you watch Speed at all?

It would be cool to go down some day!

I'm surprised Montoya didn't try pulling any of his NASCAR tactics to get back into first, he got a partial respect point for racing clean during the final laps.

the funny thing is on a model car forum I go to a buddy of mine said the exact same thing

I enjoyed the race as always. And also enjoyed viewing everyone's car that was parked in the Grassroots Parking.

Yea, those were some pretty nice reader's rides!!

As much as I've slighted the DPs (and I still think that they are not pretty to look at), I have to admit Grand Am's formula is working. To see a finish as close in the Daytona 24 as they had in their sprint races last year is astounding.

Those things must be an absolute ball to drive as well, considering some of the names who went down there to drive one this year.

Like we all say, you can't see how ugly they are from the inside, right?

I sorta wish I had postponed my trip down from last year to this year. Much better weather, much better finish, my Brumos boys ended up on top...Great race.

The GRM car coral was really awesome, some very cool rids there. We were there for most of Saturday and had a blast. I am slowing getting through all the photos I snapped Saturday (737 actually) and sharing them here: kabel's 2009 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona photo collection.\

I'm still going through my 2000+ photos from the weekend, but I've got the ones from Thursday and Friday that I liked already up. Check back in a day or two and should have Saturday and Sunday's up.

Kevin's Rolex pics

Feel free to add comments giving names or info about cars or drivers.

Kevin, Kabel, why don't you to get together and get a flickr group going for these? And send me the RSS feed URL.

DirtyBird222 wrote: I'm surprised Montoya didn't try pulling any of his NASCAR tactics to get back into first, he got a partial respect point for racing clean during the final laps.

Yeah. I was PRAYING he didn't take Donahue out of the race because that would have been tragic. We were sitting near the top of the "checkerboard" grandstand seats watching the last 3-ish hours of the race and I have to say it was truly epic. We were directly across from those 4 cars' pit boxes, and were pretty much right there when they made their final pit stops and when he finally made that pass on the outside stick for the lead. Brilliant racing all around, and as you said, a partial point for Montoya for, well, not being his usual self. The whole family had a great time (even the girlfriends), we camped out in the infield (which we found out Saturday morning was INCLUDED in the GRM passes... I don't think even GRM knew that lol), the GRM pit and paddock tours were awesome, and walking the garages at 4:30 in the morning of a 24 hour race and seeing the teams just fighting to get their cars back out was a treat. Good show by Grand-Am, the teams, and GRM :D

Tim Baxter wrote: Kevin, Kabel, why don't you to get together and get a flickr group going for these? And send me the RSS feed URL.

Should we make it a GRM Flickr group? I'll start it.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/grm/

There's already a couple of Challenge groups. I'll have to poke around Flickr a bit more and see if you can pull a feed by tag or something, so we can pull over just certain pix (like a single event)

Great race, and fun adventure! I visited the GRM area several times but never had a camera with me. Regardless, my pics are here:

http://www.get-fast.net/gallery/09rolex24

Enjoy,

Jon

Thanks GRM for the donuts and the pit tours. Here's some of my pictures from the event.

mike

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d8/harmug/Daytona%202009/?albumview=slideshow