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DGFX Endurance Series – Round 2 – Daytona 6hrs

Last Saturday saw second round of the DGFX Endurance Series, to be held during the night over 6hrs at the Daytona road circuit in the US. I was unable to take part due to….issues…so our intrepid pair of Swede’s Mr Vallström and Mr Olsson decided to take the race on by themselves…which is handy as they seem to speak a hybrid language of SweFinDanish none of which makes any sense to me.

As per the first round, qualifying is an open 20 minute affair, restricted to your class . With 20 GTE cars on the tarmac and the draft track nature of Daytona with its long sections of flat stick driving, positioning was going to be very important. Thankfully Magnus was fired up for the event and managed an excellent job of putting the TBR Green Fefe 488 in to 7th place on the GTE grid, 6 tenths behind the pole sitter, Geodesic Black.

As per DGFX rules, whoever sets the Q lap starts the race, so Magnificent Magnus lined up for the first stint of the race feeling pretty confident with the car as the setup he and Andreas had settled on was good for a 6hr endurance rather than a flat out sprint. From the start, Magnus maintained 7th place until a spin on the 4th lap dropped him almost to the back of the GTE Pro field. However, he quickly regained his composure and begun to make progress back through the field up to 8th position. Unfortunately, 3 laps later he was back down to 14th again after another small spin.

Lap 31, Magnus pits and hands over to Andreas, who clearly had the bit between his teeth and over the next 25 laps or so has battled his way up in to 3rd position.  Pitting under the Safety Car procedure, Andreas heads out again for more of the same.

Unfortunately, a couple of laps later Andreas was faced with car pointing the wrong way up the track – the ensuing heavy contact dropped TBR Green back to 13th position. even with the damage and delay, Andreas did manage to climb back to 4th spot before handing over to Magnus on lap 108, but this was mostly due to other teams pit strategies.

Magnus took over for the final 70 laps and by this point it was more a case of survival than anything. A lazy spin in the bus stop didn’t help matters and by the end of 6 hours of racing, 174 laps and 9 caution periods, TBR Green came home in 10th position in the GTE Pro field.

Much like Round 1, the boys are perfectly within their rights to feel a little hard done by with their result. A top 5 was definitely on the cards, but in a race littered with poor driving standards (not from TBR it has to be said), difficult traffic management and with multiple Safety Car periods (9!) making any kind of strategy call a near impossibility, a top 10 is still a decent result.

On-wards and upwards to 4hrs at the Barber Motorsports Park, where 16 turns of the sinuous  3.8km track are going to prove a real challenge for the multi-class field.

Congrats to the podiums in all 4 classes.

Results are here and the iRacing results are here

GSRC Coverage of the race is here.

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