Saturday Paddock Notes: Porsche GTDs Off The Pace – But A Packed House

Perturbed Porsche People

A peek at the bottom of the combined GTD times after the third Roar practice session shows clearly that the trio of new and upgraded GTD cars in general, and the new Type 992 Porsches in particular are struggling to get anywhere near the ultimate pace – the bottom seven in the times are all, and all of, the Porsche GTDs, including the Pfaff GTD Pro car.

A dip further into the data seems to indicate that, in particular, the 911 GT3 Rs, are losing out in sector three, which starts in the braking zone for the Le Mans Chicane (The ‘Bus Stop’) and continues to the high speed conclusion of the lap/

Straight line speed then appears to be the issue and there are plenty of Porsche team members who aren’t waiting to be asked the question before they offer their opinion.

BoP seems to be at the core of the issue, the fastest Porsche is three-quarters of a second off the fastest time of the next slowest car and two full seconds off the fastest GTD lap time overall at this stage.

Porsche sources confirmed they were aware of the issue but offered the comment that the traditional IMSA method of dealing with BoP for new cars was to start with the cars in a lower performance window and adjust upwards, rather than pull back cars initially doled out perhaps a more generous set of BoP values.

Packed House!

There is a very significant crowd at Daytona International Speedway for the Roar, the paddock as full at this test as this writer has seen at most, if not all of the Rolex 24 Hours race weekends in the last decade.

Whilst reports of a sold out event in race week are understood to be incorrect, race organisers are certainly expecting a potential all-time record attendance for the event.

There’s a steady stream of notable faces around the paddock still with the real feeling of the start of something new and very significant, Rob Dyson was taking a close look in the GTP paddock as IMSA founder Jim France too was negotiating the crowds with a (completely justified) broad smile!