All in all, a pretty damn good day for R4R Motorsport
... Starting as I usually do from the leadup to the race:
We were informed just a few days before the race that our long-awaited second car with Chav-homage nomenclature would be able to take the grid. R4R Massiv served as an introduction to endurance racing for Justin Lee and would be joined by Stephen Miller, Esben Tipple, and Joseph Mudrak, while the #21 would be wheeled by myself and Enis Dauti. While R4R Massiv's bright orange colors would be gracing the league for the first time, the R4R Motorsport Acura entered the race 6 points ahead of the Hungarian SiMCO Motorsport Acura, and the goal could only ever have been to secure the championship.
The late entry of the #59 R4R Massiv Acura meant comparatively little prep time for its drivers. Justin and Stephen, in particular, were making their R4R debut. Each of them got ample practice to learn the track, and we ensured the drivers we would step through the decision making process during the course of the race to help their understanding of how a race this long develops.
It took some time for us to find a setup on the #21 car. Enis and I were significantly more experienced, and as usual were charged with most of the testing and setup work on the car. A few slight modifications to the Daytona setup helped the car hit the sweet spot, and sure enough we were able to turn high 3:16's on full tanks in the daytime, even on boost 1. We were pleased and sent the setup off to the #59 team to allow them to tweak it to their liking.
Race day saw me up at 6:00AM Eastern for qualifying yet again - the strategy had worked well for us in the past, why not continue! I placed the car second on the grid behind a surprisingly quick Tam's P2 car. Knowing their race pace would likely not match their qualifying pace, and with the SiMCO car so far down the grid, I opted to take it reasonably easy and focus on A) getting the lead and B) breaking the draft.
Joseph Mudrak, meanwhile got up for a similarly early qualifying time in the #59 car, but unfortunately struggled with runtime errors all through qualifying and never got to set a lap. He'd start at the back of the LMP2 grid.
At the start, I managed to dispose of Azevedo fairly quickly, while Magnus Dahlgren hung tough. Fortunately, he got stuck behind Azevedo for just a corner or two, but it was enough to break the draft and hand me a solid lead early on. For the remainder of the first stint, I focused on hitting my marks and increasing the gap, getting it up to nearly 30 seconds by the end of the 17th lap and my first pitstop.
My second stint went equally well. No mistakes, no contact - just very clean and smooth driving while we kept our eye on the strategy being employed by Balasz Kiss and the SiMCO team. They seemed to be on a much higher boost and were double stinting tyres, meaning they'd pick up 20 seconds on every other pitstop but also meaning they'd be losing 40 seconds every 3 hours by default. We saw this as the wrong strategy and were pleased to see we were even running the same laptimes as they were, give or take a few tenths.
I was due to triple stint the #21, and had established a solid minute or so lead by the end of my second stint. Then, on my outlap on the third stint, I straddled the curb exiting Tertre Rouge and it hooked the car dead left, tearing off the nose. I did the entire stint with no nose as it was only costing about a second and a half per lap (I did manage a few high 3:17's!). From there, we figured it was best not to risk Enis getting all the damage back on our last stop, so we opted to fix the damage on stop #3 for us and I'd tack on an extra stint.
The gap stayed close to a minute while Enis hopped in to do either a quadruple or a triple stint, to be decided later based on the gap and his laptimes. By this point SiMCO had closed the gap a fair bit while Atilla Kiss pushed on very, very hard. With that in mind, we opted to keep Enis to a triple stint while I hopped in for another flex stint, either a triple for me and a double for Enis to the end or the other way around.
After the driver swap we sat just three seconds in front of Atilla with Magnus Dahlgren in the mix one or two laps down who did play a bit of a spoiler, on occasions helping either myself or Atilla as we battled for the class lead in the night. After Magnus pitted, SiMCO and myself had a couple of epic drafting battles down the Mulsanne, sometimes swapping positions two or three times before the end of the straight. Finally, Atilla hung back and got a big run, taking the advantage at Mulsanne corner. This was followed by some seriously defensive driving (and even a legitimate block or two) on the run to Indianapolis to put their Acura in the lead for the first time.
It didn't last very long. I got smart with the drafting and decided to hang back behind Atilla down the Mulsanne the next lap. I waited until right around the kink to make the move, kicked the boost up to 4, and drove right past. It very nearly went wrong as I overshot Mulsanne Corner slightly, allowing Atilla back past for about 2 seconds before he looped it and dropped 10 seconds. He was near the end of the stint, so one would think perhaps his tyres were giving up. It was the break we needed to stretch the advantage out - doing so by some 40 seconds before my first pitstop of that run. It appeared Atilla then received damage and began to fall further back, and it was smooth sailing from there. No incidents the next two stints meant I was able to turn consistent 3:17's in the night, 3:16's in the daylight and even a high 3:15 for good measure. We stretched the gap up to around 2 minutes when I handed the car over to Enis for the last 2 stints.
He drove perfectly to the end and managed to get the gap to SiMCO up over a lap, securing not only our second win of the season, but our fourth podium and the LMP2 championship. All in all, a brilliantly driven race. Apart from me tearing off the splitter, we had no real incidents. Pretty damn close to a perfect race.
We appreciate the battles over the course of the season with all of our competitors, including GT Omega early on and SiMCO towards the end. It's been a wonderful season and the championship was hard earned by Enis Dauti, Esben Tipple, Joseph Mudrak, and myself. It would be difficult to ask for more from our group of drivers! It's been great fun all season and I hope we get a season 4. Either way, we want to thank George and Yoeri for all their hard work, the commentators for their time and talents, and the competitors for fun, close, and (mostly) clean racing! See you all at the Nurburgring!
![Luca [OT]](/data/avatars/s/3235/3235113.jpg?1697196734){kind=avatar}