SKYLIMIT @ DAYTONA BEACH : PART 1 ROLEX 24 AND MORE2012-02-22
So like every year we went to Daytona Beach in January/February for the world famous Speedweeks. This is the first part of our report because the final NASCAR races are only planned for this week.So enjoy this report about one of the most beautiful parts of the world, Florida USA
Sunset over Daytona International Speedway during the Rolex 24...
Arriving at Daytona Beach is always something special. In January when Europe is way too cold, the warm sun of Florida is very welcome. Blue sky, palm trees and muscle cars... what else do we need in life, oh yes, races!
With this all access ticket a race fan can have the weekend of his life. You can enter the garages, grandstands, party porch, startgrid and even park inside the race track... Daytona is good for its visitors!
One of our Skylimit friends, Marc Goossens was driving this TRG Porsche.
Night practice at the World center of Racing was impressive again. Many cars on track and beautiful places to make pictures...
The Engstler Porsche enters the pitlane and passes the Flying lizards Porsche
This Corvette was driven by Armand Fumal, another Belgian driver. But the car had a lot of problems...
More Belgian drivers on this Viper. Maxime Soulet and Jan Heylen could not finish the race with this car...
The Turner BMW with his glowing brake discs! Great looking car!
The MAZDA RX8\'s of Dempsey Racing not only had nice colors, the flames make the cars even more beautiful
Daytona always pays a lot of respect for its previous winners. There was a parade with the older winning cars on Friday morning. Here we see the BMW CSL!
This Nissan 300 ZX also is a former winner of the Rolex 24
The Continental tire challenge was action packed!
Over 80 cars at the start and a lot of rubbing going on, even between team mates
Roush/Johnson celebrated their win with this nice drift
Before the race the drivers sign autographs and it brings them again close to the big crowd of over 80.000 people.
The racing was hard from the start! It was a real 24H sprint race!
on track, off track, they stayed on the throttle
great atmosphere @ Daytona at night
As you could see it was a clear sky in the evening as it would be on the sunday
Marc Goossens battled for the win during the whole race
This is how to cook hot dogs!
The famous Patrick Dempsey!
Night action around the ferris wheel
The great looking Turner BMW M3
Marc Goossens finished second to the Andy Lally porsche, only missing the win with less than 10 seconds...
I also went to the Sunshine Dragstrip in Clearwater for a test and tune night.
Great muscle cars around
But this Toyota Corolla with Rotory Mazda engine was the most impressive
Then off to Sebring for the ALMS winter tests
Ferrari dominated the GT class
while Level 5 racing was fast in LMP2
Porsche tested their new RSR on the bumpy old track
While Corvette will be again favorite in Sebring and Le Mans
BMW was also testing with their works team
We also visited Miami
Skylimit all over the world :-)
So this week will all be about NASCAR! Here the winning car of the 2011 Daytona 500. Will Trevor Bayne be able to repeat his magic win?
It will be all about reaching this line first!