I drove in both the Rolex 24 and the Grand Am Cup race, which was held on Friday. I will be driving a 997 Porsche (the street car version) all season in Grand Am Cup with my former World Challenge teammate Tim Pappas. The team is called Fast Metal Motorsports. It is a new team, but a very experienced group of racers led by Julian Calvet.

In the Rolex 24 I drove a new Porsche 997 GT3 Cup car with Farnbacher Loles/Orbit Racing, which combined the talents of the Rolex 24 GT class winners of the past two years. I was very optimistic because our effort was being led by the head of Orbit Racing, Rodger Hawley, who directed our 2004 GT class victory. In addition, I had an exceptional group of fast German co-drivers, which included Marc Basseng, Dominik Farnbacher and Pierre Ehret - the latter two, winners of last year's race. We also had my good friend Thomas Blam calling our pit strategy, so all the pieces were in place for a successful result.

PRATICE AND QUALIFYING

Practice began on Thursday morning. I drove first in the morning session. The plan was to bed in some brake pads and then work on the setup of the car as we had made many changes since the official test weekend a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, as often happens there was some overly exuberant driving in the first session, which resulted in a number of black flags. In the end, I was in the car for about an hour, but managed to do about three laps, which meant we had some nicely bedded pads to practice on, but no improvement to the setup. This was the last driving I was to do in the car prior to the race since we had four drivers and a lot to do prior to Saturday.

Dominik qualified our car fifth on Thursday afternoon, but dropped down to sixth on Friday during the second qualifying session. Since only the top thirty cars are locked in on the first day all but two GT cars had to qualify again on Friday. We were all very happy with this effort, except probably Dominik, since anywhere near the front is a good starting spot for a 24 hour race.

I got to drive the Grand Am Cup Porsche for the first time on Thursday afternoon. I did just a few laps. There are issues with the electronics that impact the ability of the car to function in a racing environment. The team has known about these issues for some time, but figuring out a solution has proven to be difficult. Translated to the race track the main issues were lack of power and braking ability. The good news is that the second race isn't for three months and we have some smart people looking for solutions.

I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the car handled really well right away. Unfortunately, the other issues slowed us down to the point that we were about four seconds off the pace of the leaders in the GS class. Tim qualified the car late Thursday afternoon, but to no one's surprise we were pretty far back on the grid.

THE RACES

The Grand Am Cup season began at 2:15pm on Friday afternoon. Our best hope was that we could run a consistent pace, salvage a few points from round one, and then use the long layoff to deal with the issues that were preventing us from being on pace.

Tim got us off to a good start and was moving steadily through the field. There were fifty GS cars in the race and only the top thirty places paid points, so at four seconds off the pace anything inside the top thirty was a bonus. Tim was just getting to that vicinity when on a restart he was tagged by a BMW, the impact cutting down a rear tire. By the time Tim was able to limp back to pit lane and get some new rubber we were two laps down ending any hope of a points finish. Now we were just involved in an extended test session.

I got in somewhere near the middle of the two and a half hour race. There was a procedure required to get the ABS to work, which involved turning the wheel from side to side, starting the engine, driving straight for twenty feet, and then pushing a button on the dash. I'm sure this was all very frightening to the pit lane official who had positioned himself fifteen feet in front of my car, but what could I do - the car wouldn't stop without the ABS. Fortunately, I got the light to come on before I ran him over.

Once on track, the car handled great, but even when the ABS was functioning it didn't stop very well. To add to the excitement, sometimes the ABS would turn itself off without warning. When this happened, the front brakes would lock up as soon as I touched the brake pedal, which I discovered in turn one. I hit the brakes and went straight off, luckily managing to stay on pavement - I just turned back to the right and skidded along the banking instead of trying to make the turn. Then I drove back to the pits to replace what was left of my flat spotted front tires.

When I left the pits I couldn't get the ABS to turn back on in spite of following the whole goofy procedure. I didn't want to keep pitting so I kept turning off the car in the brake zones to try and reset the computer, then fire it back up and push the button while I was going through the turns. Amazingly this worked and I got to drive around with ABS for a while.

At one point the racing gods decided to play a little joke by putting me three spots behind the pace car on a restart. I got run over like I was driving a Miata in a Nextel Cup race. I think the entire Grand Sports field passed me in a matter of three laps, and since it was near the end of the race they were in a big hurry.

With about five laps to go I pitted for fuel. When I left the pits I once again couldn't get the ABS to come back on. Once again I drove around turning the car off in all the brake zones, but this time I couldn't get it to come back on so I just drove around braking really early until the checkered flag was mercifully thrown.

Obviously, it wasn't a great effort and we didn't get any points, but I am very optimistic about the balance of the season because we have some really bright people on our team and a lot of down time prior to the next race.

The Rolex 24 started the next day at noon. Dominik was appropriately cautious at the start, but then started moving us up as things settled down. He had problems with the brakes near the middle of his stint, which we think was related to them getting a little too hot, but after he gave them a few laps to cool he was able to do quick laps again.

I drove second and there were no major issues during my stint. Pierre drove third and Marc went fourth. I can't remember when it happened, but during either Pierre or Marc's stint the left front shock began working its way loose at the top where it attaches to the chassis. Once loose, all the fluid came out and we had to stop to replace the shock. The guys did this really fast, but we were in a pretty big hole when we got back on track. Not long after that, we had another problem with the rear brakes that required another lengthy visit to the pits. By the time the second set of repairs were completed we were almost twenty laps behind the GT class leaders with twenty hours remaining in the race.

Of the cars that were still running at the four hour mark we were dead last. It was clear at that point that we had no chance of winning the race, so all we could do was soldier on and try to achieve the best finish possible. We battled back into the night and at one point when we had moved up to twelfth position in GT Thomas Blam wrote P12 on a dry erase board. Thereafter, each time we moved up a spot we updated the board.

All of my stints were uneventful. There wasn't really much point in pushing too hard, or taking any chances in traffic because we were only going to move up through attrition. By the middle of the night the dry erase board read P8 and there were a couple cars on the list that we were catching fast.

By morning we were in fifth position, but all the cars ahead of us were out of reach. The sixth place car was the #72 Tafel Racing Porsche, which had been the fastest GT car in the race, but had also had their share of problems. They were only a lap or two behind, and with a few hours remaining our other front shock started working its way loose. In addition, during my last stop the rear wing broke and had to be replaced. We had worked hard to gain all those spots and no one was very anxious to give any of them back. The wing repair went quickly, but we decided to ride out the broken shock to the end of the race. Obviously, this had a negative effect on the handling, but the loss of time on the track was preferable to another lengthy pit stop.

Marc drove the last stint of the race and did a nice job to hang on to what had become less than a lap lead over the sixth place car. Fifth place was not the finish we had hoped for, but given the hole we were in it wasn't a bad result. It is difficult to accept the fact that minor mechanical issues kept us from a chance at a win because I felt like we were as well prepared for the race as any team I have ever been involved with, but almost every team that doesn't win at Daytona has some kind of story. Maybe next year....