The 2022 running of the iRacing Daytona 24 Hours has now finished, and Prestanda NOMAD didn't really have the day we'd have liked to have. Two cars were entered:
- a Dallara P217 driven by Tony Baird, Jason Dilworth and Simon Underhill
- a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 driven by Daniel Gilding, Ryan Hamilton, Mathew Gilbert and Michael Poole
The cars were put into split #10 and #30 respectively of the main time slot of the race, and duly set out on their qualifying. The GT3 car qualified in a strong 3rd position, with the P217 struggling in 16th. Good early pace from both teams saw decent forwards progress, then hampered by issues on both sides in the early hours. The GT3 car was dropped down a few laps from the bulk of their competitors, while the P2 car seemed to be "getting away" with a couple of trips to the barrier with minimal repairs.
As the hours went on, it was clear that the P2 had a fantastic strategy for tyres dreamt up and implemented by engineer Xavier Brien (assisted by Lachlan Cooley) and looked to be back into contention for a possible podium by the end of the race. This was also down to the fact that this split was so close on pace, with the field not massively spreading out despite hours of running. That was until Jason made it one trip to the barrier too many. The damage was significant and the decision was made to retire the car around 15 hours into the race.
Meanwhile the GT3 car was in a split with a much bigger spread, being 9 laps down on the leaders around the point that the P2 car was retired. A couple of drivers had issues throughout the race which hampered any real potential for recovery, but the team did a fantastic job with their engineers (Mac Coyne and Manjunath Abhishek) to bring the car home in an eventual 8th position.
While these results were nowhere close to what we were all aiming for, nor what was possible on the day, as a team we've achieved the main objectives for this race: learn a lot about how to work within our new structure, and have some fun with our team mates. Now we will have some time to debrief and assess what we can do better next time out.