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The performance of the Team Oreca Viper and the Corvette C5R were quite amazing. Karl Wendlinger in the Viper and Ron Fellows in the Corvette finished in the closest ever race at the Rolex. The last 25 minutes of the race saw these two ont he same lap separated by about 40 seconds. Even thought the Corvette had outqualified the Viper by around 3.5 seconds, Wendlinger was able to get qualifying lap times out of the Viper after 23 and 1/2 hours of racing. Amazingly enough, the Corvette handled so well that the team did not change the brake pads or rotors for the entire race. That says much about the Pagid brake pads and Brembo (I think) rotors.
Max Papis did an amazing job as did the entire Dyson Racing team just to finish the race. Dawn on Sunday saw the Lincoln (nee Ford) drop a valve and fall down to seven cylinders. Soon after it fell down to six cylinders and lost over 40 mph on the straights. After about ten laps of limping around at over 2 minutes a lap, Papis started straight lining th corners and dropped his lap times down to 1 min 50 seconds. After wards he said that he did not use the brakes except for the hairpins. The team hung on for the longest but where eventually overtaken by two of the Vipers and the Corvette.
The 22 car Sportsracers field was decimated in the night as one by one engines failed or drivers hit something hard enough to destroy the car. The temperature fell to 35 fahrenheit (around 5 celsius) during the night and many of the drivers complained of near frozen extremities.
Team Oreca has now won in every major form of sports car racing with their Vipers. Class wins at LeMans, GTS championship in the ALMS, multiple championships in the FIA GT series, and now class and overall win at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. An amazing run for a deserving team.
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