Fourteen Daytona Prototypes showed up for the three-day Roar Before the Rolex 24 test at Daytona International Speedway. The top teams of the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series brought their best machinery: proven second-generation prototypes, sleek third-gen models, and the best performers of the weekend, the Corvette Daytona prototypes.
With the grueling 50th Anniversary Rolex 24 at Daytona only two weeks away, the teams had to use every moment to find out what worked and needed work, how their cars responded to different fuel loads, different amount of tire wear, and different track temperatures, and how the cars worked over long runs.
The Corvette DP bodywork, designed in collaboration with General Motors, Grand Am, and the various chassis manufacturers, is a big step for GM and Grand Am. GM is the first auto maker to design—and put its name on—bodywork with road-car style cues. So far it seems to be paying off—but racing will tell the final tale. For Grand Am, GM is the first of what it hopes will be many carmakers which will invest in the series.
Jim Lutz, head of GM’s Grand Am racing department, told the Corvette Racing website, “I think all of our teams accomplished everything they wanted to during the weekend. We are in really good shape for the race event. I am pretty happy with where the Corvette DP cars are at after the weekend and what the teams accomplished.”
Those Corvette-clad cars accomplished a lot: fastest in every test session, and sweeping the top three spots in five out of seven sessions.
The new Corvette DP bodywork was designed to fit multiple chassis and succeeded with all of them—Dallara, Riley, and Coyote Corvettes all ran in the top three.
Max Angelelli in the No. 10 SunTrust Corvette Dallara turned in the fastest lap of the weekend on a lucky, one-off qualifying-type effort, but the SunTrust car was tops in two other sessions as well.
“We did a qualifying run under the perfect conditions—low fuel, new tires, a good, clear lap, no mistakes. It was the perfect lap,” Angelelli told the Corvette Racing website. “Obviously we’re happy, but not because of that lap. We’re happy because we did eight practices without a single issue. Our SunTrust Corvette ran really well the entire time. So far, I’ve never had a January test as good as this one.”
“The new Corvette is a major step that General Motors has taken. There is a lot that still has to be done; many little things that still need to be improved. And, to understand that the hardest race for a car is its first race, and this one just so happens to be a 24-hour race, it’s a major risk and commitment that everybody is taking. On the positive side, things have gone very, very well, so far.”
Teammate Ricky Taylor was similarly pleased. “We did qualifying simulations, we did long runs, we did brake testing, we did radio testing, back-up radio testing. We did everything you could possibly think of and had plenty of time and are now down to our final prep for the 24-hour. Brian [Pillar,] our engineer, told me he’s never left a test this happy and this well-prepared, so I think that says a lot.”
