Black Sea RD

Congratulations, well done!

Great to know about the strength of the DFI engines and stock transmissions.

Cheers,

Kein_Ersatz

Never a more true example of the axiom, to finish first (second & third) you first have to finish!

So much decided in the last 5 minutes of a 24 hour race.

Great showing for the gators in GX!

Turb-OH Brad

I was surprised at how well a relatively stock car held up for 24 hours of relatively quick running.

The Mazdas were WAY slow out of the gate, so even if they had continued running they would have been far behind.

Seth Thomas

Great run in the 24 Hours to BGB and Napleton. The cars were definitely built to last 24 hours and more when it is all said and done. Our real weak spot was at the end where I had to drive the last two hours without a clutch. Can't beat a Porsche podium sweep though!

bauerjab

Seriously, how do you do that. I figure you can upshift ok, but how do you downshift w/o the ability to match revs.

GTgears

You can actually match revs. Keep in mind the Caymans ran the H-pattern synchro street box. So it has a neutral. Imagine a double clutch rev match downshift without being able to actuate the clutch.

You pull it to neutral, tap the throttle until you have raised the revs enough for the gears to synchronize on their own and notch it in. It takes a bit of work, but is totally possible.

I personally had to do this on my street car over the summer because the tines on my pressure plate got soft and wouldn't release the clutch. I daily drove like that for the better part of two months before I found the time to do a clutch job on the car.

John, thanks for the kind words. All three of you teams did GT proud this weekend. BGB Motorsports, Bullet Racing, and Napleton are all much appreciated ambassadors of the Guard brand.

bauerjab

Thanks for info - hopefully I'll never have to use it.

KaiB

It's really not that difficult at all.

StoogeMoe

I don't want to belittle the effort put forth in the win, but the result has to be kind of empty. Where was the competition? No Mazdas made it, and the Lotus team didn't make the show. Where were the other GX class cars? Here's a list of the class contenders

6-Cylinder Cars:
Audi TT
Hyundai Genesis
Lotus Evora GX
Porsche Cayman
Nissan 370Z
Nissan Altima

Turbo, 4-Cylinder Cars:
BMW 1 Series
Chevy Cruze
Ford Focus 4-door
Mazdaspeed 6
Subaru BRZ
Scion FR-S
Volkswagen EOS

GTgears

That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that Napleton took 26th overall in a 57 car field. The lowest horsepower entries in the race beat half the field. They beat GT3 Cup Cars entered by the likes of TRG, Muehlner Motorsports, NGT, Dener Motorsports and Konrad/Orbit. The little Caymans came into the big pool with the top names in endurance motorsports and outlasted them. Regardless of the how or why the other teams went out, Napleton, Bullet and BGB beat them all.

The fact that the class was thrown together so quickly that only 6 cars entered doesn't really matter when you look at the big picture. Grand Am had put a 10 car cap on it anyway, so there was not that much room in the class even with the long list of other potential entrants you have put up. Could have only been 4 more cars on the starting line.

Just finishing a 24 Hour race like Daytona is a major achievement in and of itself. Beating half the field is something that they can be very proud of, IMO.

Bullet-Racing

John, Thank you for the write up and more than that for your support that enabled us to even get to the race.

Not many know how hard it is to build a legal GX car some 5000km away from the sanctioning body Grand-Am.

Grand-Am was very slow releasing the final rule set and John you were amazing in your help with this.

We had a crash that left both ends of the car with frame damage on Thursday afternoon late and with John's help and influence at a local body shop and an all night repair we were on the track Friday morning. You are a great racer and a true gentleman.

Matt from Guard as always was there to support us with his rock solid diff and I am very grateful for that. We have always only run Guard Transmission products in our many Cup cars and Caymans by choice and not as a result of any sponsorship arrangements.

Napleton and BGB ran flawless races in my opinion and I know first had how much behind the scene effort that took.

Congrats and Thank You to all

Steve

BGB Motorsports

Steve,

Your guys are good guys and they seem to be a bunch of like-minded racers like us. While I know how much time you and Bernie put into that car and while I know it stopped being a BGB car the day it left, a small part of me takes much pride in the fact that 3 Caymans got on the podium in a major endurance race inspired by rule work that was driven mostly by Joe Varde and myself because we wanted to see Caymans running around Daytona and no one wanted to see a near empty class. Everything came together at the last minute but what is cool was that 3 different groups could get together and all build 3 cars slightly differently and basically show up and breathe life into a class that otherwise would have left some Grand-Am fans seriously disappointed all while putting on a good show and running near perfect races.

Can you imagine if I had given up on the Cayman GX project at Laguna Seca in September like I wanted to when we were told we couldn't have a sequential, we couldn't run ABS, could only have 17 gallons of gas and could NOT have roof mounted engine air? A bunch of fans would have been watching a new class with no one running before dark at hour 4. So...thanks to everyone at Bullet for continuing on with their dream to return to Daytona because I just helped; you guys made the commitment.

John

P.S. I'm not about to post the email here I received back from Porsche Motorsport. Send me your Porsche badges from the front of the Cayman. I'm sending them all in on our behalf.

P.P.S Todd asked me why I had our crew guy fix our competition's car. I told him that this is the difference between being a racer and not. I told him that if Bullet beats us, it's okay to be excited since you fixed their car. I drove that car to work every day for 12 months and it was featured on Grand-Am's web site with a buildout story. It went to Vancouver, came back to Daytona, ended up back at the body shop where it was first painted and then went to the podium. Thanks man!

GTgears

Thanks Steve,
We appreciate your loyalty and are really glad that the car was able to get fixed for the race and perform so well.

Regards,

Matt

dougdep

"P.S. I'm not about to post the email here I received back from Porsche Motorsport. Send me your Porsche badges from the front of the Cayman. I'm sending them all in on our behalf."



Interesting

MUSSBERGER

Is this a reprimand or an acknowledgement of the accomplishment?