It is a car race.
A sports car race.
It isn't as popular among non race fans as Indy, or the other Daytona, the 500 for NASCAR.
It has always been a race for real race fans. I mean who else could think watching 24 hours of car racing at one shot is any good? At the end the winner is laps ahead of most of the cars, and lots of cars don't even finish.
This is long attention span motorsports.
The cool thing is that lots of people race since it is a team of drivers in one car. So you get pros from all different racing backgrounds, plus guys like the late Paul Newman would race, and he by the way would do really well. Indy car champ and bay area guy Jimmy Vasser was there as was former Oakland resident and HP engineer Bill Lester.
It is among the fist races of the year and the distance and amount of time cars are on the track always leads to some drama taking place. Even at sunrise heading into the last few hours of the race "stuff" always seems to happen. The cars are so well built now, and the engines so reliable that they don't really baby them too much, they push and push to the end.
So I always like to watch the race, even the night coverage when these fast cars and glowing brakes make them look like some kind of alien spacecraft going around the track.
The race today had all that drama and the last few hours was a big 3 way fight for the lead. Every corner seemed to have slower cars on the track that all 3 would have to pass cleanly. They did time after time and would run nose to tail around Daytona.
The winner? David Donohue, the son of a BIG childhood hero of mine.
Yea when I was a kid I really liked the 49ers and John Brodie, and the Raiders and John Madden, and the A's and Giants and Warriors, hey even the Seals!
But I was always really into motorsports. I really liked Mark Donohue. He always drove cool cars, and seemed to do well.
He was trained as an engineer and applied all that he learned to the cars, the race setup, and his pursuit to find an advantage by thinking "outside the box" long before that was some buzzword phrase.
Example: His team would dip the car body parts in acid to remove metal. Just the body parts, it wasn't a safety risk.
Why? It made the car car lighter. Just a very very little bit. But in a 12 or 24 hour race that little bit x the number of miles helped a whole lot. Better gas mileage, fewer stops, it could turn, brake and accelerate faster too. But you had to make sure nobody leaned against it in the pits!
Thinking like this happens all the time in racing these days. A limit on the fuel tank size? Hmm ok, but not on fuel line. So go from the tank, run as much fuel line on a car or motorcycle as you can, then attach it to the engine. If the race officials want to measure the capacity of the fuel tank, no worries, it will always pass. A big famous motorcycle team did that in the Daytona 200 a few years back.
They changed the rules.
It's not cheating as much as looking at the rules and seeing what isn't there. You don't ask if you can do it, and you do it and keep your mouth shut.
Ever been to a race and had a pit pass? You see lots of fans walking around with cameras taking photos. Think they are all "fans"? Think any are members of other teams in their "non sponsored" civilian clothes taking some photos?
Bet on it.
Mark wrote a book about all of this, plus his early life, his racing career, and just how to think and figure out stuff by taking a different approach. While it is pretty much all about racing it is really a book on problem solving. Hey Mark didn't always get it right, and he tells those stories too!
The title really says it all:
The Unfair Advantage
It was out of print for years and years. You can get it now. It is well written, and Mark's approach to his driving can easily translate to whatever you do in life. I have used this "Unfair Advantage" approach to working in radio.
How?
I ain't tellin!
Get the book, and you'll soon see how to change your thinking and see how there can be a different way to get things done.
Oh and hey congratulations David Donohue, that was a hell of a race! It was maybe the best Daytona 24 finish ever.
I wonder what secrets stories the car could tell.
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