PRUETT: A Rolex 24 to remember

 The International Horseshoe and Lake Lloyd at night during the Rolex 24 (LAT photo).

Marshall Pruett reflects on the events of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship opener and prospects for the future. 

WORST FEARS REALIZED

It wasn't a topic mentioned on a regular basis, but when it did come up, looks of “I hope we never find out” were commonplace. With Memo Gidley's jaw-dropping crash on lap 93 of the 52nd running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, our worst fears were realized when the front of his Riley-built Corvette DP was flattened against the back of Matteo Malucelli's Ferrari F458 GT Le Mans car.

We'd seen numerous front-first crashes in more than a decade of DP competition, but we'd never had something of this magnitude to gauge how the front of a DP would deform.

With its mild steel tubeframe construction, a deep, thick splitter made from carbon fiber, and a radiator with its associated ducting housed beneath a sturdy nose piece made from carbon fiber, there was a hope that all of those items working together would act as a buffer – an informal assembly of components to compress like an accordion and dissipate a significant amount of energy – before the tubeframe chassis itself was compromised.

With its front-mounted radiator design, Daytona Prototypes have run without front crash structures since their introduction at the 2003 Rolex 24 at Daytona. The physical layout of the DP has always differed from ACO-legislated P1 and P2 designs, which feature side-mounted radiators, allowing the space for large crushable structures to be mounted to the front of the chassis. In some cases, the entire P1/P2 nose piece serves as the crushable structure.

The forces produced by Gidley's DP hitting the back of Malucelli's nearly stopped Ferrari while it was under full acceleration registered at the extreme end of what any prototype chassis is designed to endure. It's worth overstating that there was nothing normal or routine about this accident, and even in the absence of hard data to parse through, one look at the replay is all it takes to appreciate the sheer violence of what happened.

Owing to the running-into-a-brick-wall nature of the crash, it's hard to say whether having a large, P2-style crushable structure in place of the radiator and ducting would have made a significant difference in the amount of energy that was released before the bulkhead was reached. 

One thing we do know is the use of a front crash structure is worth exploring for the DPs. Of the four different brands of P2 chassis competing in the event, every one carried its ACO-mandated front crash structure (LEFT) in the race, and if it will add to the energy dissipation on DPs, there are few arguments to stay with the status quo.

Grand-Am previously mandated the use of a Riley-built rear attenuator – a small crushable structure affixed to the end of the gearbox – and they are still required, so the concept of using a disposable carbon fiber/aluminum honeycomb box for rearward crashes has been viewed as a must-have safety item.

Conventional wisdom would suggest adopting a P1/P2-style attenuator up would also be a valuable safety requirement to consider, but admittedly, that's an assumption. Hard data gleaned from comparing frontal crash testing of a Gen3 DP and a 2014-spec P2 is required to make an informed statement on that topic.

The Gen3 DPs, which debuted in 2012, feature narrower cockpits and reconfigured nose and radiator sections. The Pre-2012 Dallara, for example, used a square, narrow radiator fed through a snout-like intake, but with the move to the Corvette DP bodywork, that layout was abandoned in favor of a more traditional wide radiator and exit ducting.

We can speculate that the new front Gen3 layout on the Dallara (and Riley and Coyote DPs) is better at absorbing impact forces than its Gen2 predecessor, but without the numbers to compare and contrast the differences, we're left operating on little more than hope and guesstimation.

For all of the negative comments made about the DP's tubeframe construction, I'd take a maze of welded steel to stop the punching force of the Ferrari's gearbox over a carbon fiber tub every time. I'm not talking about the merits of a carbon tub in a rollover, a glancing blow or its torsional benefits. Having seen noses and gearboxes punch into and through Indy car tubs the past two seasons, I'm glad Memo had steel in front of him when the F458 pierced his DP. Whether the physical damage he incurred could have been lessened by the addition of a front crash structure is for IMSA to determine.

Our worst fears with a frontal DP crash were indeed realized, yet Gidley's injuries seem relatively minor to what the violence of the impact suggest they might have been. The Gen3 DP could be superior – vastly so – to what a P2 car could withstand in a similar accident, yet no one can make that claim with the slightest hint of authority.

With all of the testing resources now available to the series, it's completely unacceptable to have such a numerical blind spot on the Gen3 DP's crashworthiness.

This needs to be rectified immediately.

REAL HOUSEWIVES OF DAYTONA BEACH

You're close to winning the Iron Man triathlon. Through months of hard work and numerous smart choices made at every step of the grueling event, you've survived the brutal ordeal and can see the finish line in the distance.

Then, to your utter amazement and total disgust, the organizers decide to make you wait about 1000 feet from the line as the rivals you've out-paced are allowed to catch up. With all the training, tactical advantages and even a bit of good fortune having delivered you to the doorstep of victory, you've been stopped and told, in essence, everything leading up to that point has been erased. Now it's time for a manufactured dash-to-the-finish.

All the effort, all the sacrifice…wiped away to give the TV audience an ending that wasn't going to happen without human intervention.

If you were the athlete in question, you'd be pissed – angry that you'd invested so much into making a difference between winning and losing – only to have the organizers decide to pull a few puppet strings to spice up the show.

If you were one of the hundreds of drivers or crew members participating in this year's Rolex 24, or the thousands watching it live, I'm guessing there was a similar, sickening feel when a mysterious caution period sprang from Leh Keen's momentary trip into the Turn 4 tires with the race all but finished.

Keen nosed into the tires, reversed, and was gone in an instant. He was by himself, a good 30 feet from any other cars and barely came to a stop before he was turned around and driving back onto the racing surface. If you watched the race, it was one of dozens of brief on and offs, but, for reasons only known by the series, Keen's brought out a race-wide caution period instead of a local yellow.  

Earlier in the race, both ESM P2 cars spun at the Bus Stop, with driver Ed Brown managing to record a sizeable crash before eventually pulling away. He was much closer to oncoming traffic, had a proper crash, sat stationary for a while and yet, by contrast, no race-wide caution period was deemed necessary.

Fellow ESM driver Scott Sharp spun at the Bus Stop two minutes later after contact was made with another P2 car. Sharp was in greater danger of being hit than Brown, struggled to get the car fired to pull away, and when he did get going, nearly caused a five-car accident by driving into a gaggle of oncoming GTD cars.

Once again, no race-wide caution period.

Granted, the ESM examples I've cited took place between 3:18 and 3:20 p.m. on Saturday. What made Keen's situation unique was the timing.

With the race set to receive the checkered flag at approximately 2:11 p.m. ET, Keen slid off at 1:49 p.m., or 23 hours and 38 minutes into the event. Cue an unnecessary yellow flag that, at least among those in the media center, produced a collective groan and comments of “A NASCAR yellow” preceded by a few curse words.

For those following the race, questions over fuel strategy and whether some cars would be able to make it to the finish were present just before Keen's off, and with this magical yellow, a gift was given to those who'd needed a splash of gas.

The yellow flew at 1:50 p.m. and, despite the insistence from IMSA earlier in the week that “quick yellows” would be used when simple things like picking up debris or similar activities were required, cars circulated behind that pace car until 1:59 p.m., burning nine minutes for Keen's brief off-course adventure.

After circulating at half-speed for nine minutes, the pits were then opened at 2:00 p.m., allowing all those needing fuel to stop, and finally, after a 13-minute interlude, the green flag waved at 2:03 p.m.

Leads were erased, an eight-minute sprint to the finish was produced and, at least for me, I wondered why we bothered spending vast sums of money to hold the first 23 hours and 52 minutes of racing when all that seemed to matter was setting up a made-for-TV dash for glory.

Some have called it the “NASCAR-ization” of sports car racing. I prefer to call it the “Real Housewives of Daytona Beach” syndrome: Take any series, subject it to inane entertainment policies and practices that guarantee its roots and base qualities will be sacrificed for maximum ratings, mash the throttle and don't look back.

Women from Atlanta to New Jersey to Washington DC to Miami have all been made to look and sound like carbon copies of the same vapid, ignorant, self-hating stereotype that made the original show held in Orange County so popular. “The Real Housewives of Orange County” has indeed set the standard Bravo's applied everywhere else, and for the most part, it has worked.

Interestingly, the formula hasn't always been a success and, in a more relevant nod to what took place Sunday afternoon, Bravo's producers haven't bothered to try and replicate the Real Housewives model in metros where it doesn't fit the culture.

It doesn't take a rocket surgeon for IMSA or its parent company NASCAR to realize that with endurance racing, applying a soulless, ratings-grabbing officiating model doesn't fit the fans who tune in or pay to watch trackside, nor does it feed the competitive fires that lead so many manufacturers to join in on this form of motor racing.

Trying to boil a 24-hour race down to an easily digestible eight-minute sprint seems like a perfect choice if you're trying to turn the series into “The Real Housewives of Daytona Beach,” but for those of us who love endurance racing, the first 23 hours and 52 minutes matter. We don't need it to be dumbed down for the sake of excitement.

The mistakes made, bad luck suffered and wrong strategy calls are supposed to count in the final reckoning. The leader holding a 15-second advantage over second place after nearly 24 hours of racing should be seen as a massively small margin to be celebrated, not something to be zeroed out to make the sport more appealing to those with short attention spans.

Foyt and Gurney managed to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans without “competition yellows.” Holbert, Bell and Unser Jr. managed to win the 24 Hours of Daytona without interference from the tower and the modern day heroes are also capable of getting to Victory Lane on merit alone.

Let's hope that message is received before we get to Sebring.

TAKE THE TIME, GET IT RIGHT

If the caution period for Keen wasn't bad enough, the penalty assessed to Level 5 Motorsports Ferrari GTD driver Alessandro Pier Guidi had me about ready to swallow my tongue.

Pier Guidi and Flying Lizard Motorsports' Markus Winkelhock rounded the Kink in the infield on the final lap, with the FLM Audi R8 on the outside. Going around the outside at the Kink has always been a high-risk maneuver, and with the race on the line, no one could fault the German for trying such a low-percentage pass.

It was the embodiment of “go big or go home,” and Winkelhock certainly went big. It also didn't work, yet IMSA, within seconds of the Audi's off-course excursion, announced it was reviewing the situation, and before the lap was complete and the checkered flag had waved, a penalty was assessed to the Italian, handing the victory to FLM.

Hours later…MANY hours later, IMSA reversed the penalty (RIGHT), which seemed to please almost everyone, barring the good folks from FLM. When Scot Elkins, IMSA's VP of competition and technical regulations, made his way to the media center podium to announce the reversal, I asked the following question:

MP: “Knowing that we just completed 23 hours and 59 minutes of racing, is this something that, in retrospect, a decision could have been held until after the checkered flag to avoid having to go through this process?”

SE:  “You know, it's a good question. Honestly, the thing is that the group of supervisory officials aren't always present in race control, so the way it's worked and the way it's always worked and the way the rule book states it is that the race director is the chief executive of the competition and that his decision is the first decision, and if anything seems different or seems to need review, then we gather the group of supervisory officials and take a look at that decision, and that's exactly what we did here.

“The uniqueness of this was that it was on the last lap of a 24‑hour race, and so the race director was doing exactly what he is expected to do, which is to make a decision and try to have some finality prior to the end, and that's what he did.  The process worked.  If you're asking could we have done it differently, I don't think so.”

As IMSA's senior competition official, I don't fault Elkins for sticking up for his team. Calling out race director Paul Walter is the last thing he or any other person in his position should do – publicly.

We know, from what we've seen with many other racing series, that sanctioning bodies want to close the broadcast with the viewers having finality – in this case, knowing the four class winners. I'd argue that with such a debatable situation among the top-2 GTD cars on the final lap, rushing to judgment for the sake of TV might not have been in the best interest of the sport.

The call rankled most of those who saw what did (and didn't) transpire at the Kink, the silly penalty called IMSA's integrity into question during the hours it took to undo reverse the decision and, looking at things from a wider perspective, it thoroughly embarrassed Audi.

All because of an unfathomable need to carry out swift justice.

Sadly, the Keen caution and the GTD penalty took place at the end of the race. Barring the Gidley/Malucelli crash, the first TUDOR Championship event was loaded with positives, yet the takeaway for many was how the final 21 minutes of the race cast so much shade on an otherwise sunny event.

QUIET CONFIDENCE

Continental Tire received a thorough drubbing for the tire blowouts during testing at Daytona in November, yet with its 2014-spec tires loaded and ready for the Rolex 24, there was little to say about the brand during the race other than its tires helped produce some great racing. Its tires performed ably in Prototype, PC and GTD, allowing teams in all three classes to focus on strategy and speed.

AXR's A-TEAM APPROACH

If you're familiar with my track record of picking winners, you know I'm the last guy to ask who'll take pole or come away with victory. But I will admit to having an inkling, as far back as November, that the Action Express Racing team might be hard to beat at the Rolex 24.

They showed up to the first portion of the November Tests at Sebring with a full 2014-spec Corvette DP, sat ready on pit lane for practice to open on Day 1 – one of only five cars or so across the four classes to hit the ground running – and never missed a beat.

AXR had one of only two DPs at Sebring, and as it turns out, team manager Gary Nelson crafted a plan immediately after the Grand-Am finale in September to conduct the first test and use the mileage to arrive at the Rolex 24 more prepared than his rivals.

“The plan we had never changed,” said Nelson. “From the checkered flag at Lime Rock, we knew there was going to be a tremendous amount of changes to go through with the DPs for 2014. We categorized those changes based on which ones we thought would really make our cars faster, and which ones we thought were just new.

And then we said that if we didn't have sufficient testing on those items by the middle of December, we'd go back to the known parts for the Roar. So we never got the paddle-shift on; our guys pulled a lever the entire time, we never got the fly-by-wire done and there was a new battery that was lighter, and we liked all of those things, but we didn't see the speed potential for the time spent required with those things.

“So we stayed with the bigger battery, the throttle cable and kept the exhaust going out the back. We liked the carbon brakes, we saw the speed there, and we saw the speed in the traction control. For the other things, we saw very small gains in performance for very big losses in time and effort, so we kept it simple and took that plan into Victory Lane last weekend.”

LE MANS 2.0

If you're among the religious ilk, please join me in prayer: “Lord, we come to you and humbly ask for the GT Le Mans battles that raged throughout the Rolex 24 to continue at Sebring any every other stop on the tour this year, amen.”

There were numerous points last weekend where the Corvette-vs.-Porsche fight was the best part of the race, and with the SRT Vipers holding sway over the early hours and BMW book-ending the race using reliability with one of its entries to make an improbable run to second place, it was a dream contest for GT fans.

Porsche had the race sewn up earlier than expected, thanks to unexpected problems for some of its rivals and new-car blues for others, but the 991-based 911 RSRs always seemed to have a boxing partner to keep them honest.

The relatively open nature of the Daytona track played a big part in creating such phenomenal GTLM racing. At Le Mans or even Sebring, big bunches of slower cars can easily cause major separation in each class, but that rarely happened on Saturday and Sunday.

As I've said after a few other endurance races in recent years, if the folks at IMSA were to cut a video of just the GTLM action into a dedicated video, I'm sure they'd have plenty of takers lining up to buy it. Fantastic stuff.

TO BE EXPECTED

Retirements are rare for P2 cars at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The 8.5-mile track is harrowing and poses many dangers, but the surface and general layout does not exact a heavy toll on the cars that compete during the 24-hour event.

Daytona International Speedway's 3.5-mile layout has an entirely different effect on cars, and if there's a hint of anything flimsy or untested that could fail, Daytona usually finds it. The P2 contingent, with their lightweight cars and production-based engines, were punished by the track and its hard transitions from the infield to the banking.

P2 alternators, gearboxes, engines and bodywork extremities were sacrificed to the circuit, leaving only one entry, the ORECA-Nissan of Muscle Milk Pickett Racing, to finish somewhere in the vicinity of the leaders. The Pickett team, by chance, was the last to receive its car and contested the race with less mileage and expertise on its P2 package than any other Prototype team. Coming home fifth overall and three laps down was a testament to the quality of the team and chassis/engine package, and minus a 17-lap detour to the garage, the OAK Racing Morgan-Nissan could have been up there with them.

ESM's HPD ARX-03bs had their problems and Mazda's reliability run came to a sad end with less than two hours left to go.

Looking ahead, IMSA could certainly do more to balance the outright performance between the DPs and P2s at the 2015 Rolex 24, but on the basis of getting to the checkered flag first and with minimal interruption, the DP might continue to present the best chance to win.

Now the series moves on to Sebring, which sports a track surface in some areas that feels like an endless stretch of speed bumps, yet for whatever reason, it doesn't have a reputation as a car breaker in the P2 class.

BOW DOWN TO GTD

I'm still giggling at how good the race-long battles were in GT Daytona. Attrition played a role in the GTD class, just as it did in the other three categories, yet, with the Balance of Performance tables in mind, the various manufacturers represented in GTD all gave serious accounts of their capabilities.

Ferrari climbed from the bottom of the time sheets at the Roar test to have a fighting – and race-winning chance – at the Rolex 24. Audi returned to form, Porsche was ever-present and even the lone BMW Z4 persisted to take seventh. TRG-AMR also put on a fireworks display with their Vantage V12s before long calls to the garage stifled their efforts.

My RACER colleague Mike Kitchel recalled a rather funny sight of TRG-AMR driver James Davison, having completed a triple stint that saw him haul the No. 007 from the rear of the field into contention, looking like he was about to collapse in a state of delirium while mumbling about all the passes he made.

It was that kind of ragged run for the GTD competitors, and the race was filled with similar stories throughout the GTD class. Flying Lizard Motorsports' Spencer Pumpelly was mercurial, Snow Racing's Madison Snow was utterly ridiculous, Andy Lally did his usual Ninja routine for Magnus Racing, Kenny Wilden was a rocket for Scuderia Corsa and the list could go on for days. Epic driving, epic duels and some of the most dogged performance throughout the entire event.

NOT SO MUCH

PC was one class I expected to offer great racing, yet failed to deliver. It was the only category that saw the winner come home with a one-lap advantage over second place, and with only nine cars in the PC field, losing three of them before the one-third mark of the race was hard to miss.

The third-place finisher was nine laps arrears, and the gap gets worse from fourth on back. PC was stacked with talent, but it felt like half the yellows were caused by the spec ORECA FLM09-Chevys.

It wasn't a surprise that the ultra-experienced CORE autosport scored the PC victory, but the limited amount of wheel-to-wheel battles among serious players went against everything I'd expected to take place.

COMMERCIALS

Along with the rest of the assembled media, I was fortunate to watch the Rolex 24 via the raw, commercial-free TV feed inside the media center. I've yet to watch the broadcast version sitting on my DVR, but based on what I've been told from far too many, I'll need to get my fast-forward button warmed up and ready to blow through the commercials to find the racing.

LUMPS

Ford took their lumps leading up to the Rolex 24, and the learning opportunities continued during the race. The problems weren't entirely of their making – Michael Shank Racing's EcoBoost lost a lot of time with gearbox issues, but the suspected engine failure on the No. 01 Ganassi EcoBoost DP and the late demise of the No. 2 Ganassi entry left Ford looking to Sebring for another shot at victory.

The cars were fast, which was a nice surprise, and lasted far longer than expected. Those are two items they can build on for the 12 Hour.

MISCELLANEOUS

• The first thing out of overall race winner Sebastien Bourdais' mouth when I saw him after the race was, “How'd you like my freestyle pit entry?” followed by a huge grin. His sideways, brakes-locked approach to pit lane to hand over the car for the final time to Joao Barbosa was simply awesome.
• On a related note, it was cool to see Bourdais win his first Rolex 24 while his 2013 IndyCar Series engineer Tom Brown won the PC class with CORE autosport.
  
• CORE not only won PC, but its team helmed the factory Porsche program that claimed GTLM honors. Nice.
• Turner Motorsport's Continental Tire Series GS win was taken away in the tech shed. An airbox irregularity was cited as the cause. 
  
  
• One supposed reporter held the media center hostage any time a person stepped to the podium for an interview. From the meandering multi-part questions to trying to use the GTD penalty reversal press conference to ask for clarification on an obscure qualifying procedure, it became downright embarrassing for the series when it failed to pull the reporter aside and set stricter guidelines for continued participation in the process. 

PARTING THOUGHTS

Finally, after a gestation period that felt like 16 years instead of just 16 months, the combined forces of the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am emerged for the world to see under the TUDOR United Sports Car Championship banner.

The ending to Round 1 was far from perfect, but with plenty of time between Daytona and Sebring, fixes to the glaring issues can be made. The stumble with the finish line in sight shouldn't diminish the many positives that marked the series' debut, and IMSA's PR team has plenty of compelling storylines and themes to feed sports car fans until the 12 Hour arrives in March.

Of all the shortcomings the TUDOR Championship had to deal with as the Rolex 24 at Daytona approached, it was a lack of time – for testing, for the rules to be solidified, for performance balancing to be perfected and every other facet of competition and organization – that had IMSA playing from behind.

Leaving Daytona, and once series officials have a chance to catch their collective breath, IMSA should have more than enough time to get its plans for Sebring in place, to alert its teams to those changes – whatever they are – with plenty of advance warning and take a hard look at the Rolex 24's shortcomings. The negatives at Daytona fell more on the series than the cars and competitors, which makes me optimistic for what lies ahead.

Internally, RACER.com saw its biggest single day of web traffic since the site's inception in May of 1996 during our Rolex 24 coverage. January, normally a month that suffers from diminished traffic due to the severe lack of news and steady racing, is set to break RACER.com's all-time traffic figures – not just for other Januarys, but in the 213 months since RACER.com came online.

The 2014 Rolex 24 is the engine that drove our traffic, and based on what Daytona International Speedway has said about its attendance for the race and anecdotal data from the series about IMSA.com, interest is up across the board. Maintaining that interest is the next priority for the series.

P2s should be in their element at the legendary airport circuit, DPs can be dialed up or down as needed to keep pace with their high-downforce aero packages making a return, PCs have always put on a torrid display, GTLM is primed for another battle among titans and, if we're lucky, GTD will be another unpredictable thriller right to the last lap.

Round 2 can't get here quickly enough.