The message flashes on the screen: “The toughest battles go to the mightiest soldiers. “
Thus began the team meeting that included the eight drivers, top control and an army of Wayne Taylor Racing (WTR) engineers. Even if the race possibly didn’t go green until 1:40 p. m. ET, that 8:30 a. m. meeting. The WTR carrier is when the festival starts.
WTR’s technical director, Brian Pillar, is guilty of coordinating almost every facet of the running aspect of the organization. Your task is that of a component engineer, component strategist, component therapist, component animator, and whatever it takes to get your drivers locked in and those of WTR. Acura ARX-06 prototypes pass faster.
Over the next 65 minutes, Pillar will lay out in great detail WTR’s plan of attack, using charts and graphs that to an outsider are entirely confusing. But the eight drivers sitting around the table all appear to understand the data related to tire wear, wind speed and direction, and ambient temperature that will all affect the cars’ performance.
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Looking ahead to the race, WTR believes that if he needs to win it will be because he has made fewer mistakes, because he has the fastest car. Porsche and Cadillac have shown more speed so far, and the feeling among many team members is that they will have to look for other tactics to beat them.
“What we want to do for 24 hours is stay on the leader’s lap,” Pillar said Friday. “If it’s the end of the race and we’re on the first lap, I can win. “
It’s not just any race. This is the prestigious Rolex 24, a 24-hour standing power race held at Daytona International Speedway. And WTR, whose two-car team boasted a top-tier driver lineup that included a Formula 1 world champion, an Indianapolis 500 winner, one of America’s most level-headed young IndyCar talents, and several aces. of the sports car, allowed The Athletic to provide first-hand experience. Watch the ups and downs that happened to achieve a record sixth victory in this grueling event.
Just before the meeting ended, Honda Racing Corporation USA President David Salter gave a pep talk.
“They’re the most productive team in the business,” he says. If you look here, they’ve all come together. It’s amazing. So let’s take care of each other. This is what is at stake for the next (24) hours. Take care of others. Do your best to be productive for others. Stay calm. For the most part, this is a threat control exercise. And enjoy it, not many other people can do that. There is no genuine tension; The only genuine stress we’re going to put is on ourselves.
WTR driver Jenson Button, the 2009 F1 world champion, summed up the meeting.
“Don’t f— it up,” he says to laughter from the room.
The Rolex 24 is different from NASCAR’s Daytona 500 or IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500, the two most popular races in the United States.
The first race of the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) SportsCar Championship season, the race is contested between 4 elegant cars competing at the same time, with cars with other degrees of performance. The GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) is the ultimate sensible elegance with the fastest and sometimes the most technologically advanced cars. And because of that, a GTP team wins the overall race to the maximum, determined to complete the maximum number of laps in 24 hours.
Due to the excessive distance, teams will have to rotate several drivers (usually four) during the race. A driver typically runs anywhere from 90 minutes to more than two hours before handing over the baton to a teammate, and then returns to the car once their position is in place. in the rotation is busy.
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It’s an endurance race, with drivers pushed to their limits as much as the cars.
“Very typically the average heart rate is going to be about 160 beats per minute the entire race,” said Dr. David Ferguson, an associate professor at Michigan State University who studies the health and human performance of race car drivers in addition to working closely with WTR. “They’re going to burn on their stint probably somewhere between 1,800 to 3,000 calories, and they’re going to see probably a two-degree-Celsius increase in core body temperature and lose somewhere between probably four and six pounds of sweat.”
Endurance races are equally as hard, if not harder, on team personnel and crew members. WTR’s main engineering team stayed on duty for all 24 hours this past weekend, rarely stepping away for even a few minutes.
And it’s no bigger for those who are in the rhythm of maintaining the car. It’s not unusual to see team members temporarily look between pit stops anywhere they can find a spot along pit road.
Throughout the race, WTR makes every effort to ensure that its drivers, engineers, crews and other workers are well fed. Every few hours, new gastronomic features such as pasta, quesadillas, poultry noodles arrive at the stand. soup, pizza, breakfast sandwiches, vegetables, new fruits, and crackers.
“Crew guys don’t have the option of going away and going to sleep, so for the crew guys, it’s the same approach: ‘Let’s get some data, let’s understand what you’re doing and let’s fuel you correctly,’” Ferguson said.
Because of the length of the race, teams need to expand their roster of drivers beyond the two or three generals who share a car in other IMSA races.
Over the years, WTR has earned a deserved reputation for signing notable drivers who don’t compete in IMSA on a full-time basis to one-offs or part-time deals to fill these open slots. The list includes IndyCar stars Scott Dixon, Alexander Rossi and Helio Castroneves; four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon; and two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso.
The fact that a star arrives and is perfectly suited to the WTR is something critical in the selection of the team. Egos will have to be controlled at the door. Team goals precede any individual achievement and are the secret ingredient for which WTR has won five Rolex 24s.
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“One of the things I’ve been very strong on is there’s no major driver, no second driver, no third driver,” team owner Wayne Taylor said. “What I tell other people is that no one can secure a win, we can still make sure you’re going to compete for the win, and we’ve been doing that for 25 years. “
This year’s addition is Button. And just like the aforementioned names, he had a hard time saying no to WTR.
Aligning with WTR checked a lot of boxes for the British driver. Since retiring from F1, he’s focused on competing in various disciplines, and IMSA is one such series in which he has little experience. He had never entered the Rolex 24. He also already had a bond with co-driver Jordan Taylor with the two working together on NASCAR’s Le Mans Garage 56 program last year, making the acclimation even easier.
Button fits exactly how the team wanted. Before the race, he shamelessly shared his comments after practice and training sessions, accepting his role as a rookie in IMSA, on the Daytona circuit, and in GTP cars. Between track sessions and dinners together, he temporarily established strong relationships with Taylor, Colton Herta and Louis Delétraz (his co-drivers in the No. 40 Acura).
“I’ll lean on anyone to help me, and they’ll give it to me very willingly,” Button said. . . . I like the atmosphere of the team. They’re very professional, but it’s a very talented organization made up of other people who also have a lot of fun when they do it, which I think is key, although very regimented when it comes to meetings and what we’re here to accomplish.
One exception for Button: He was exempt from the questionnaire Pillar sends out to prospective full- and part-time drivers to help them better understand their tendencies. He will ask them which foot they prefer to brake with, how they prefer a car to be balanced and what their former teammates have said about them.
But Button’s resume speaks for itself.
“He’s won a world championship, that’s Jenson Button,” Pillar said with a laugh.
As the fourth driver of the No. 40 Acura, Button’s long-awaited debut will come well in the race. He appears in the cockpit, which looks more like a command center you’d see near Cape Canaveral than a classic cockpit, at 20:08 and puts on a headset to get in touch with the engineers.
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Button got behind the wheel at 9:23 p. m. , replacing Taylor. Over the next 2 hours and 15 minutes, you’ll have an eventful but effective turn. On two occasions he had slight contact with another car, one of his own faults was when he didn’t notice that a GTD-class Corvette PRO was on the outside, the other when a McLaren GTD-class mistakenly hit him in the rear bumper in a corner.
Still, Button does exactly as he is supposed to do. He knocks out a triple stint for the team, allowing his teammates to get some much-needed rest as they will be tasked with carrying the car home for the remainder of the race.
“It’s my first Rolex 24, so getting used to it is crazy,” Button said after his race. “You’re betting like a bird at about 200 miles per hour, so it’s a big learning curve, but I enjoyed it.
“It’s action-packed. It’s endless out there. You think you’ve outgrown everyone and you get a little new air, and then all of a sudden, they’re all there again. There’s not a lot of escapism there. So making trips, it’s hard, and I don’t think (any other team) does; It’s just us doing triple stints, and it’s definitely wreaking havoc on you mentally.
While Button’s race went smoothly in the WTR pits, insults flew when things went considerably wrong. The other WTR car, the No. 10 Acura, came to rest on the track. Driver Filipe Albuquerque can’t restart the car and there are fears the challenge will be terminal. WTR is faced with the option of only one car left with 15 hours and 40 minutes to go.
The track staff places the car in a truck and takes it to the garage, where it is invaded by the WTR staff. Blame it on an electrical challenge. The solution will take some time. After about 90 minutes, the number 10 car returned to the track, but all chance of victory was lost.
For a team already suffering from the superiority of Porsches and Cadillacs in terms of speed, it’s a huge blow. WTR can no longer have both of its cars in other methods in hopes of finding something that will allow it to take advantage in the field. .
There’s one hour left in the Rolex 24 and the No. 40 WTR car sits in 3rd place. That’s encouraging, but they’ll need a bit of luck if they want to beat the two cars in front of them, the No. 31 Action Express and the No. 7 Penske Porsche.
Then, with 52 minutes remaining, a caution presents the scenario they’ve hoped for all weekend. They are not going to beat Action Express and Porsche by outrunning them, but they can out-strategize them. And this is that moment to try.
As soon as the caution is called, Pillar and his team start running through the options.
They may simply try to get ahead of other groups by making a quicker pit stop, which would mean consuming less fuel and threatening to run out of fuel. However, his car is fast enough to stand up to Porsche and Cadillac. To think that they could maintain the lead is illogical and they would also threaten to finish on the podium. All things considered, leaving Daytona in third place would be pretty good.
The option of the moment is to take enough fuel to finish and tighten Delétraz so that he doesn’t do anything that could jeopardize a potential podium. And all the while hoping that Porsche and Cadillac will fight each other so hard that they go toe-to-toe.
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Option 2 is selected. Delétraz warned: “If the opportunity is there, we will take it. But we are in no danger of running away from this race.
The restart came with 32 minutes remaining.
At the second point of the cabin, Taylor sits on a mini couch with Button next to him on the stairs, leaning against a railing. Once the race resumes, they spend the next 32 minutes watching TV, analyzing what’s unfolding. in front of them.
“Gonna need traffic to help him out,” Button says to Taylor.
Where Felipe Nasr (Porsche) and Tom Blomqvist (Cadillac) catch traffic and how they manage their way through is going to factor heavily into whether Delétraz has any chance.
“We want (Nasr and Blomqvist) to fight,” Button said.
At one point, Taylor leans forward, almost with his head between his legs.
“My center is very high,” Taylor says.
Delétraz is doing everything he can. Lap after lap, he hit the mark to stay close enough to jump in case the leaders stumbled. However, the numbers do not favor WTR. Not only is time running out, but the gap between Delétraz and the leaders is widening.
Porsche wins the Rolex 24, giving owner Roger Penske his first Daytona victory since 1969. WTR finished third, a result they will gladly accept.
Button compliments Taylor on a job well done and the two percent pranks before Button realizes he has to run away. The team will have to appear in victory lane in full uniform, which means Button will have to don his fireplace suit.
“I got to go quickly change,” he tells Taylor. “I’ll see you down in victory lane.”
(Top photo of Wayne Taylor Racing’s No. 40 car driving at dusk during last weekend’s Rolex 24: Andrew Bershaw / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)