By Archibald Macbeth
It all started with a phone call a few months ago.
“Is that Archibald Macbeth?”
“Yes,” I replied wondering what I was about to be sold.
“I’m just calling to say that you’ve won the Motor Sport prize to go to the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.”
“What?”
From then on all the arrangements were made through Birgit Cummings and we arrived at Orlando airport on January 22 thanks to Virgin Atlantic. From there we headed to the Daytona Hilton where our room overlooked the beach and the Atlantic. From here on in we were royally taken care of by the Daytona team.
Friday
Welcome to Daytona Speedway! First up was a tour of the Control Tower, high above the main grandstands, with Mark Raffauf (below) – the Grand-Am director of competition and then on to the garages (pits the other side of the pond) with sports car legend Hurley Haywood.
Afterwards we went to a talk by Rolex Series manager Gary Cummings (Birgit’s other half) about the thinking behind Grand-Am and the approval of chassis and engines for use in the series – it would have been interesting to hear his take on the outcome of the race when the leading car was found to be 12lbs underweight but not disqualified…
Saturday
After arriving behind a Harley Davidson police escort, first up was a ‘hot lap’ round the track in a race-prepared Porsche, either a 914/6 or an early 911, but sadly we didn’t take part, as our travel insurance would have been void in the event of an incident. I suspect this applied to the others too, but they ignored it! Whilst waiting around we had an interesting chat with Motor Sport’s Nigel Roebuck who was over at Daytona for the first time in a while.
Formula 1 seemed many miles away as all the drivers had to take part in an autograph session, which of course, was very popular with the spectators. Each team had a table behind their garage at which the drivers sat with a stock of posters, photos and brochures. It certainly was a far cry from the closed world of Formula 1 drivers and we got the chance to grab a quick work with Dario Franchitti (below with Danica Patrick), Jeff Ward and Oliver Gavin. Of course we didn’t mention that Mrs Franchitti, Ashley Judd, was in the news at the time for her spat with Sarah Palin…
Not only did the general public all have plenty of time to talk with the drivers during the autograph sessions, but when all the cars were lined up on the grid, thousands of spectators were also able to wander down the start-finish straight, speak to the drivers and get a second chance at an autograph. With 10mins to go to the start, they all melted away and the race got under way on time!
We were then taken to the Daytona Experience – a museum area on site where there were historical exhibits, a pit stop competition, film show and simulators – for the opening few hours of the race. Afterwards it was onto the Daytona 500 Club for dinner where we watched the cars lapping in the dark before returning to the hotel.
Sunday
Back to the track we went and watched the race for a while from the SkySuite, which provided a bird’s-eye view of the track. Brunch was also available while we watched… now that’s the life!
Even if we were being plied with food and drink it was impossible to ignore the racing. Come the final hour and there was a four car, nose to tail battle for the lead. First with Montoya in front, but once the Columbian hit traffic, Donohue got past. There followed a full course yellow, but the four leading cars left the pits in the same order as they’d entered… just.
Montoya had a last try as they crossed the finish line but it wasn’t enough. Donohue won by 0.167sec – the closest ever Daytona sportscar finish. Later it was announced that it was in fact the closest ever (contested) 24hr sportscar race finish.
Once the race had finished we were taken to Victory Lane, where the winning car was, and had a close view of the celebrations followed by a photo shoot with the winners and Brian Redman – honoured this year as Grand Marshal.
We then said our goodbyes to Birgit and our fellow competition winners through other publications, who all helped make the experience so enjoyable.
Monday
Daytona provided us with a taxi on their tab so we used it to visit Ponce de Leon lighthouse (first European to land in American mainland) and the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences, both very good.
Tuesday
The next two weeks were to be spent touring between the Savannah and Sarasota so you can image our delight when Hertz’s ‘Hyundai Accent or similar’ turned out to be a 4-litre Ford Mustang convertible. A little extra performance and comfort never hurt anybody spending two weeks on the road…
Many thanks to our hosts for looking after us so well and also to Motor Sport for offering such a great prize. My first copy of magazine was in August 1957, I think, with the classic shot of Fangio drifting the 250F Maserati at Rouen. I bought it every month for years until the ‘80s, then sporadically, but have now become a subscriber again since its re-launch.
