This weekend was a very important one to close out the year of racing for Prestanda NOMAD, with races in two of IVRA's flagship events. Both the Endurance and GT Sprint events would take place across the same weekend and, luckily in terms of preparation activity, the same track. Daytona International Speedway would host us for both races.
A major iRacing update to the GT3 class cars around 10 days before the weekend meant all teams were scrambling to get the most out of the work they'd already done, and understand cars that now performed much differently on their tyres. We worked hard across both the driving and engineering teams to minimise the initially negative issues we found with the update until all drivers involved in the weekend felt comfortable enough to push on.
Endurance: 12 Hours of Daytona
The double header of races started on Saturday with the Endurance race – once around the clock for the 12 hours of Daytona. Our GT3 car was qualified into 8th place in class by first-timer to an IVRA event Tim Penny who was helping to fill out the Sapphire rated driver part of the team with superb pace.
The early hours of the race were frenetic – the pace was high throughout the classes, but there were also a lot of incidents causing multiple safety cars early on, no doubt in part caused by the introduction of the new LMDh cars to the top class.
Tim did a great job to manage safety cars in his first outing, and handed the car over to Ryan Hamilton for his stints. During those stints the team managed an inspired safety car call, realising that the caution would be thrown and getting into the pits in time to take full service before the lane closed.
From there onwards the job was to keep the car clean as we cycled through Tom Stanley, taking the car through the halfway mark in 4th place, and Jason Dilworth. The second half of the race contained yet more safety cars, and the #256 car was able to make the most of them and start to challenge for and hold the lead for significant amounts of time.
In the end the car came home in P2 behind a #264 car that had finished with incredible pace. P2 for us, having missed the first round and struggled a bit in the second, is a great way to finish off this part of the season and builds a strong foundation going into 2023.
GT Sprint
The double header continued on Sunday at the same venue, but this time for a GT3 only race just under 2 hours in length. The now regular lineups for these cars of Jason Dilworth in the Division 2 #256, with Ryan Hamilton and Ayden Refaie in the Division 3 #356 lined up again – with a couple of those drivers still riding the high of the previous days result.
Both cars qualified strongly, taking third in class in both cases. The major talking point before the race was about fuel strategy, with our experience from the previous day showing that it would be very tight for anyone to make this a one stop race. The race got underway and the inevitable drafting trains formed, with each battle turning into a game of chess at just under 300kph. Both cars moved up to P2 in class in the early stages, but a spin for Jason in the #256 around a quarter of the way in dropped him down the order, while Ryan spent some time leading Division 3 in a great battle with Element SimRacing's #372 car.
A safety car in the first stint of the race gave both cars the ability to relax a little on fuel, and by the time the pit stops came around we were confident of making this our only stop. Jason continued on in the #256, with Ryan handing over to Ayden in the #356 to once again close out the race. Strong performances from both saw Ayden keep hold of his second place, with Jason working hard with the #191 car and a lot of bump drafting to move back up to second in class too.
Those results completed a triplet of second places across the weekend, and mean that we're in strong positions in the GT Sprint championships – leading Division 2 and holding second place in Division 3 with a very small gap to the top. A huge amount of positives to take into the rest of the season as it kicks back off in January.
