Derek congrats to you and your team. I was cheering on #80 SYnergy, my good friend is crew chief on that car

and I am friends with #96 Leh Keen also so I was rooting him on....

TRG was 3rd place cheering section because they built my 996 back in 2002

 

Hey Derek,
how do the Porsche teams feel about racing vs the rx-8? I realize there's NO comparison - if this was a race on the street, but wouldn't it be better to Race against cars that you also compete against ON the street? 911 vs Ferrari vs Corvette vs BMW etc? Yes I know, NONE of those other cars are competitive in the Grand-Am series, tho it's quite a bit different in the ALMS.
I wonder about the different things that the mazda's are able to do TO BE competitive, vs cars that are the standard-bearer.

 

Werksracer, there are a lot of things that go into making that little RX-8 a competitive race car. first of all its a prep2 car(prep1=unibody, prep2=tube frame) made by Riley. the powerplant is not the standard 2 rotor, the race car uses a 3 rotor, not sure on the displacement, it also gets a few hundred lbs weight break and 2 more gallons fuel capacity. it gets the weight break due to the lack of torque and the fuel increase because they use a lot of fuel , they spin those things to 11krpm's i believe!!! The Daytona course plays right into their package, it utilizes the high rpm power they make since we are flat out for so long, the lack of torque is not really a factor at Daytona.

Brucem, Lee's car had a stout driver line-up, its too bad they had problems, well, not too bad