Fourteen Hours Gone—and #22 ESM Also Gone
With ten hours left in the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship Rolex 24 at Daytona, slow steady rain and plummeting temperatures turned the track treacherous, costing the race leader his lead.
Brendan Hartley had just rejoined the race on ice-cold tires, on an ice-cold track. He couldn’t get any temperature into the tires coming through the infield; he hit the banking, hit the gas, and nearly slammed the wall He overcorrected and slapped the passing #991 GTD TRG Porsche, bounced off, and slammed the wall hard.
Hartley was in a predicament unique to drivers of high-downforce racing cars: He could not go fast enough on cold tires to generate enough downforce to heat his tires enough to go fast enough to generate the downforce needed to heat his tires so he could not ....
Ricky Taylor, on an extended stint, resumed the lead in the #10 WTR Cadillac. Joey Hand in the #66 Ford GT continues to lead GT Le Mans, with Tony Kanaan in the #69 running behind, with Giancarlo Fisichela in the #62 Risi Ferrari in third.
Matt Bell in the #57 Stevenson Audi leads in GT Daytona
Patricio O'Ward in the #38 Performance Tech Oreca leads PC.
