The Fastest Corvette at Daytona

Endurance racing is very simple. They start the clock and then 24 hours later they stop the clock. The car that has covered the most laps wins. The Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona race is 24 hours of sheer endurance. It's not really about going fast, but rather it's a test of who can stay together and who can spend the least amount of time in the pits. You don't go very fast if your car is parked beside the pit wall while a crew madly tries to repair a series of problems.

Team Flis managed to make their Corvette go further than any other Corvette at the recent Rolex 24, they understand the Daytona race, they knew what they had to do to win--after all, everyone on the team grew up in Daytona. Until 2002, they just hadn't been able to capture the elusive victory in five years of trying.

The really smart thing that Team Flis did was put all of the fast guys into one car, and all of the experienced drivers into the other car. It was also nice that all of the PR effort went into the No. 90 car with Ric Cirulli, Kevin Harvick, and a couple of ReMax executives who brought a big bundle of cash with them.

The No. 09 car had all the experienced endurance guys like Craig Conway, Doug Goad, and Andy Pilgrim. Mike Ciasulli was the only driver on this team that lacked the endurance experience. If experience wins endurance races, then No. 09 Corvette was the place to put your money. This simple fact was overlooked in the pre-race hype of NASCAR stars and ReMax cash.

You have to remember that fast guys won't win the race for you at Daytona. This race is really about the slow guys. The fast guys are all within a tenth of a second around the Daytona course. When you get to the slow guys there can be as much of a difference as two or thee seconds. Can your slow drivers keep you in the hunt? Is your slow guy as fast, or faster, than the slow guys on the other teams? No driver out there can compensate for a really bad slow guy. Over the 24 hours it's really the slow guys that put you in victory lane. If they can run a reasonable pace, and you have good pit work, you're going to win.

There's another factor to consider at Daytona. This track is half the distance of the Le Mans track. They also put twice as many cars on the starting grid. And just to keep things interesting, the speed differentials are tremendous. The lap-time difference between the front of the field and the rear was over a minute. The car on the pole was able to average just over 125 mph, while the back of the pack couldn't average 80! At night this huge difference gets real interesting. Just one more reason you need experienced drivers.

On the Saturday morning of the race, all is right with the world. This is always a time of incredible optimism and total adrenaline rush. Months of preparation have finally resulted in two Corvettes resting quietly in the garage. Cans of brake clean are being emptied to make sure that every last spot of oil and dirt are removed from them.

The only real competition for this Corvette team was a well-prepared Mustang driven by Darin Brassfield and Irv Hoerr. They had beaten Harvick and the No. 90 Corvette for the pole. This Mustang was also the only AGT car in the race that was as well prepared as the Flis Corvettes.

As the clock moved to 1 p.m. the test began. Everyone was dressed in brand-new uniforms, the Corvettes looked beautiful, and all the sponsor decals were freshly shined. Behind the pits the Flis family had stacked an impressive array of parts, including several brand-new noses. They knew that carnage was a fact of life at Daytona, and they were ready for it.

By 4 p.m. the No. 29 Mustang was in the pits. Things were looking good for the Flis team with both Corvettes running like the proverbial Swiss watch. Corvette No. 90 was in the AGT lead, No. 09 was in Second place, and the Mustang was in Third place, well off the pace. All was well with only 21 hours to go. If this had been a normal race the celebrating could have started. However, nothing's normal about a 24 hour race. Remember, you really don't race other cars, you race the track and yourself. Moreover, you do it twice around the clock.

Just before dinner, or at 5:30 to be exact, smoke was coming from the No. 90 Corvette as it exited the chicane. A few minutes later it was passed by the No. 09 Corvette. Then the Harvick/ReMax Corvette fell to Third place. Tension was increasing in the Flis pits. This team knew the end of the No. 90 Corvette was fast approaching, but they continued to hold out good thoughts. Optimism is a key ingredient in an endurance race.

An hour later, at 6:30, the engine expired on Harvick. The 24 hour race had just become a four hour race for the ReMax sponsors and Harvick. Now it was all up to the experienced endurance drivers in the No. 90 Corvette.

This was where the crew used their experience from the previous Daytona events. The broken Corvette wasn't put in the garage, or into the transporter. Instead, they parked the wounded warrior behind the pits, just 30 feet from the crew. What had once been a mighty Corvette was now a parts depot.

In the weeks before the race the Flis team had made certain that every single part from the No. 90 would fit No. 09. The two cars were identically prepared, and every part would interchange with a similar part from the other Corvette. Instead of having a broken race car, they now had a treasure trove of spares. This is what planning and organization is all about.

Nighttime at Daytona is a test of survival. There's almost 10 hours of darkness. At Le Mans they only have about four hours of complete darkness. A lap at Daytona is half the length of Le Mans, the darkness is twice as long, and the amount of cars is doubled--this is why many consider Daytona the more difficult race. It will crush even the strongest of dreams.

You simply want to get through the night at Daytona. You put your most experienced drivers in the seat and tell them to bring the car back in one piece. You simply can't win this race during the darkness. All you can do during the long Daytona night is lose the race.

As the darkness was setting in, the No. 29 Mustang spun and hit the guardrail in turn two. It was all over for the battered Ford. It may have been fast, but now the No. 09 Corvette was going to race against the track, and itself, until tomorrow afternoon. The Flis team was now in total control of its own destiny.

The dawn came up over the Atlantic Ocean on an infield of broken dreams. All through the night engines and transmissions expired and cars ran into each other. As the morning sea mist covered the track, the smell of fiberglass resin mingled with the pungent odor of hot gear oil. The crews worked feverishly to get just a few more laps on the record books--no one wants to give up at Daytona. The once shiny race cars are put on life support and the crew hopes they can go just a little further.

Dawn is where someone like Pilgrim earns his money. When I asked the crew chief how things were, he said, "Andy can't see out front window as he drives into the morning sun, we're losing power steering fluid, and the tires are worn out. Andy's having a ball and the car is running great."

One of the things that good endurance drivers can do is drive a worn out car. A lot of drivers can do well in a perfect car. Not many can drive a worn out racer with a host of minor problems. This is why the driving team of Goad, Conway, and Pilgrim in the No. 09 car is perfect--they've got the experience to make the car last.

Around 8 a.m. the No. 09 Corvette came into the pits to have a power steering hose replaced. This was simply a typical repair for this race. The team was well prepared for this and everything went smoothly. The name of the game was to not beat yourself. Their first Rolex win was now so close.

Around 10:00 Ciasulli came into the pits with a bent control arm, he seemed to find things on the track to hit. Earlier he'd destroyed a wheel and a tie rod. One part of the Flis team began to work on the No. 09 car while another group pulled the control arm off the No. 90 car that was sitting nearby.

Around 11 a.m. the numbers mavens calculated that the Flis team had won the race. They had a 99 lap lead on the Second place car. There was simply no way for the other Corvette to make up the necessary time.

At this point they could have simply parked No. 90, waxed it, had breakfast, and then gone out for the final laps--but these guys were racers. I suggested that they at least bring the car in for a decent cleaning. The crew chief looked at me as if I was crazy. "We're racers--and we're going to drive the car to the end."

At 11:30, the team readied the pits for the final pit stop. Someone got the idea of painting little checkered flags on the final set of tires. The comic relief of it all was amusing. After so many years of running Daytona, the Flis team was finally going to win. The elation was tremendous. They had done their job to perfection.

Then less than an hour later it all fell apart. The differential was broken. The rules state that the car must be running at the end of the race. Whatever the problem, this Corvette had to return to the racetrack. Once again the cruel and demanding racing gods were going to test the Flis organization. If the other Corvettes in the field couldn't beat them, then the track itself was going to test this group of long-time friends.

A new differential was pulled from the stack of supplies and a group of people went to work on the car. Even as this tremendous effort that was taking place, you could sense the total frustration that was happening. "Why this? Why now?" The differential gears were replaced, and as the motor was started for hopefully the last time you could see the good feelings return. The racing gods had tested the team, and the team beat back the problems. This was to be their day. Years of effort were going to bring the Corvette into Victory Circle.

When the race ended at 1 p.m., the Florida sun was shining brightly. A quest that had started in 1990 with a Mitsubishi Starion had finally resulted in a victory. Twelve years of hard work finally paid off. They had truly gone from local heroes to world champions.

The most impressive part of this effort was how well the group functioned as a true team. If you've studied anything about management, you know that the ideal team is one where the leadership function moves from team member to team member. Every time a problem arose, the person with the most expertise in the area took charge.

The Flis team operates like an MBA case study in management. Over the weeks I hung out with the Flis team I never really understood who was in charge. It finally occurred to me that 12 years of racing had created an incredibly efficient organization--a true team. The Flis family had built an organization that could take on the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona and win. This was the true spirit of Daytona. The local guys had taken on the world and they won.

What's an AGT Corvette?The Grand Am officials really like American cars. They also feel the average guy needs a place to go racing. The AGT is a wonderful class for American cars. Indeed, it was the only place you could find Corvettes at Daytona this year. The AGT class has become the home of racing Corvettes.

They may not be exactly like the Corvette at your local Chevrolet dealership, and they don't go as fast as the million-dollar factory C5-Rs, but they sure are fun. These Corvettes are closely related to the Trans Am series that we're all familiar with. They also have some similarities with the Winston Cup cars we watch on T.V. Since Grand Am and NASCAR are all part of the same family, why should that surprise us?

The idea is to have a tube chassis and a big V-8 motor up in front of the driver. Then, you can hang a variety of fiberglass shapes over the tube chassis. Actually, you could make the Flis car a Camaro very easily.A friend of mine suggested that these AGT Corvettes weren't real Corvettes. The truth is that they're almost as much a Corvette as the Pratt & Miller Corvettes we'll see at Sebring and Le Mans.

The AGT Corvettes are built to Grand Am rules and the C5-Rs are built to Le Mans rules. Truth be known, there are very few stock Chevrolet parts on either car.

The whole idea of Grand Am racing is to put sports car racing in touch with a reasonable budget. The purpose of Le Mans is to see how large a corporate budget you can destroy. The best part for the average race team is that the Grand Am rules work. It's actually cheaper to run an AGT Corvette than it is to campaign a Corvette in the SCCA Speedvision World Challenge series. The Speedvision series will cost you roughly $300,000 (Audi spends over a million dollars per-car for the Speedvision series) for the season, and under the current rules you'll never get a Corvette to finish in the top five. You should be able to do the Grand Am series in an AGT Corvette for around $200,000 and win on a regular basis.

Keep in mind that Grand Am is run by the same guys that allow V-8s and rear wheel drive in a Chevrolet Lumina. When was the last time you saw a two-door Ford Taurus at your local dealership? Especially one with a V-8 under the hood.Race cars are always built to a set of rules. Grand Am rules differ from Le Mans rules. We shouldn't be surprised that the Corvettes in the two series are different. To race at Le Mans requires the budget of a small nation. The Flis team can probably race a Corvette for the whole season on less money than the factory team spends on motel rooms.

The best part is that any of us can buy an AGT Corvette. When was the last time you saw a C5-R ALMS Corvette for sale? The goal of Corvette Racing is to put Corvettes on the racetrack. The Grand Am series is doing just that. The Trans-Am series will do the same thing this year. Chevrolet will continue to spend a zillion dollars on Le Mans. There's room for everyone at this party. None of the cars on the track bear much resemblance to the Corvette you purchase at the dealership. Then again, who cares?

The Mosler MT 900-R Revisited When we last checked on the Mosler MT 900-R, it was a problem child with shifting problems. After the 2001 Rolex 24, it just dropped off the radar. The sole competition Mosler finally ended up in Japan in a GT series. This year we had two Moslers at Daytona. Perspective Racing had an impressive effort that Joao Barbosa put on the GT class pole.

In case you've been living in a cave, GT is also known as the Porsche GT3 class. When you can go faster than a Porsche GT3-R, it's a good day. When you can do it two years in a row, it's even more impressive. The Mosler has made this very same statement two years running. If they could only sort out the transmission problems.

As fast as the Mosler may be, the real question was durability. This year's race answered that question. Both cars finished, and did so in a respectable fashion. The most amazing part of the Mosler story was that the car from the Boston Motorsports group was driven by only two people. They lost the other two drivers to some sort of complex bureaucratic problem. Suddenly it was 1965 all over again. It's been a long time since just two people drove a race car for 24 hours.

They managed to keep the car in almost one piece and finished 26th in class. While the finish wasn't all that impressive, the effort truly was extraordinary. They deserve an award for just finishing.

The other Mosler, from Perspective Racing, did an outstanding job by finishing 5th in the GT class. That was in spite of spending several hours in the pits with the usual Mosler transmission problems. It's a car with a lot of promise.

For all the promise the Mosler has shown, it's still in need of a very good race team. The Mosler is caught in the middle of a classic marketing problem. It's not all that cheap and a little more money will put you into a Porsche GT3-R. If you run a Porsche, you'll have the big Porsche parts truck at the race track. At this point Warren Mosler simply can't give his owners the same level of service that Porsche provides. Porsche owners pay mightily for this service, but they don't seem to mind one bit.

The Mosler is one step away from being great, but that's one very high step. The decision to race in GT class may be costing them a lot. They might want to try a tube-frame Mosler for AGT. I'm sure they could sell a half-dozen of them. Then they could at least have a class victory. Then again, I'm not sure Warren Mosler would like that solution. Warren likes to do things the hard way. Mosler has never been known for the conventional solution, and the MT 900 is anything but your conventional Corvette.