AudiJon
02-06-2005, 10:18 PM
Last night was my girlfriend's roommate's birthday. So a few of us go out to a club with her to celebrate. At dinner, before we head out I come up with the bright idea of going to Daytona AFTER the club... I managed to convince one friend to come with me. We live in east Orlando, so it's not TOO far.. The night out turns out to be pretty stale, and after being at the club for only about an hour, everyone is ready to go home and pass out... not us though, our night has just begun! I give my girlfriend one last chance to join us, she suprisingly declines, and goes home to bed.
A few sodas, a few red bulls, some junk food and 90 minutes later, we pull into Daytona. I blow by 3 cops that are sitting in the median running radar, no idea how fast I was going or what the speed limit is... ooops. Luckily, they don't come after me.
After another 30 minutes of driving around trying to find a functioning ATM, we buy our $10 student tickets (not bad!) and pull through the tunnel, put the windows down and listen to the Daytona Prototypes screaming by. It's now about 2:30AM and 50 degrees outside, got our jackets and headed to the hairpin to watch some racing.
Brakes were glowing, cars were sliding around, and at one point there was a group of about 12 cars that came flying into the corner at once. There was contact between two Porsches, and one went spinning off the track and tapped the tire wall. No damage apparent, he fired it back up and kept on. We walked around a bit more trying to find my friends who were there waiting for us. We found them. Asleep in their cars. Hmmm... all of a sudden the junk food and red bull was wearing off. At 4am, we pass out in the car, I set my phone alarm for 6am.
6am - I throw my phone in the back seat and go back to sleep.
8am - I'm awake and hungry. We go wake up some of our other friends and head to the Dennys about a mile from the track. My friend, Bryan finds what looks like a pubic hair in his food halfway through breakfast and the rest of us lose our appetite.
9am - 11:30am - We sneak into the hot pits, after two tries of getting caught, we make it in. There's an open pit box for people like us to go and take pictures and be out of the way of the teams. We decide to stick our head into a few of the team's tents and I end up running into a couple of people I know and a guy who I race with who had run the Grand Am Cup race the day before. We watch a pit stop/driver's change from the team's pit tent.... totally awesome. Coordianted chaos. Such a cool experience.
Took a bunch of pictures, hung out a little while longer, and then headed back about 30 minutes before the end of the race. Almost fell asleep at the wheel a few times, hit my bed hard when I got home.
Check out the pics on my Fotki, sorry if it seems unorganized or out of order, I just uploaded all of the ones I took, didn't filter any out. Some are pretty cool though.<ul><li><a href="http://public.fotki.com/JonMiller/rolex_24_hours_of/">24 Hours pics</a></li></ul>
A few sodas, a few red bulls, some junk food and 90 minutes later, we pull into Daytona. I blow by 3 cops that are sitting in the median running radar, no idea how fast I was going or what the speed limit is... ooops. Luckily, they don't come after me.
After another 30 minutes of driving around trying to find a functioning ATM, we buy our $10 student tickets (not bad!) and pull through the tunnel, put the windows down and listen to the Daytona Prototypes screaming by. It's now about 2:30AM and 50 degrees outside, got our jackets and headed to the hairpin to watch some racing.
Brakes were glowing, cars were sliding around, and at one point there was a group of about 12 cars that came flying into the corner at once. There was contact between two Porsches, and one went spinning off the track and tapped the tire wall. No damage apparent, he fired it back up and kept on. We walked around a bit more trying to find my friends who were there waiting for us. We found them. Asleep in their cars. Hmmm... all of a sudden the junk food and red bull was wearing off. At 4am, we pass out in the car, I set my phone alarm for 6am.
6am - I throw my phone in the back seat and go back to sleep.
8am - I'm awake and hungry. We go wake up some of our other friends and head to the Dennys about a mile from the track. My friend, Bryan finds what looks like a pubic hair in his food halfway through breakfast and the rest of us lose our appetite.
9am - 11:30am - We sneak into the hot pits, after two tries of getting caught, we make it in. There's an open pit box for people like us to go and take pictures and be out of the way of the teams. We decide to stick our head into a few of the team's tents and I end up running into a couple of people I know and a guy who I race with who had run the Grand Am Cup race the day before. We watch a pit stop/driver's change from the team's pit tent.... totally awesome. Coordianted chaos. Such a cool experience.
Took a bunch of pictures, hung out a little while longer, and then headed back about 30 minutes before the end of the race. Almost fell asleep at the wheel a few times, hit my bed hard when I got home.
Check out the pics on my Fotki, sorry if it seems unorganized or out of order, I just uploaded all of the ones I took, didn't filter any out. Some are pretty cool though.<ul><li><a href="http://public.fotki.com/JonMiller/rolex_24_hours_of/">24 Hours pics</a></li></ul>