Daytona and The Race That Lasts for 24 Hours
Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 04:11PM
Story by Rodger HawleyEvery year the challenge of racing for 24 Hours straight around the 3.56 mile road circuit in Daytona Beach Florida is just too much fun to miss. For the last 15 years I have been lucky enough to be a part of this great race. For the last couple of years I have found myself saying that this might be my last time – this year was totally different. Even before this years race was finished I was starting to plan what next year might hold in store. But I am jumping ahead of our fantastic, yet not quite what we wanted 24 Hour race from this year.
We ended up getting a lot more TV coverage than we expected when the car caught fire and became a high light of the race footage that was run often as a recap of the race during the live telecast. Ironically, this year before the race I had decided that most people to do not even recognize our car during the TV segments so I had a 3 foot long by 18 inch tall ORBIT logo on both quarter panels in yellow on a dark blue background that jumped off the car. So when the TV cameras zoomed in on the car as it burst into a spectacular 20 foot flame the ORBIT logo was right were I wanted it, but not in the situation I was hoping for. Good news is that the driver was unhurt and was able to drive to the pit lane entrance where fire crews were stationed which limited the damage- actually the car was barely damaged by the fire but the flames burned through some fuel lines and some engine wiring which meant we had to retire the car after 16 hours of racing.









