Yeah, my apologies to my fellow Hoons. When I attended the Roar Before The 24 a couple weeks ago, this olelongrooffan despite having worn long johns, three layers of shirts as well as a scarf and overcoat later in the evening, well, I got sick as the Zombie Racer did last week. You know, up nights sweating, then freezing, then sweating. Handkerchiefs were my friend for over a week. But, I didn’t miss a day of work. Hell, I can be sick in my cube as easily as I can in The Garage and still get paid. As a result, my creative juices weren’t flowing all that well and I just couldn’t get into putting this up. Well, as the Rolex24 is next weekend, I figured I probably needed to suck it up and get this up for my fellow Hoons enjoyment. If you remember, we had just entered the yellow garage area and had seen way to freakin’ many kids. But we also spotted Chip Ganassi’s Target sponsored machine parked in the number 1 garage bay, as usual.

A couple doors down, I was able to capture this pair of images just to demonstrate how light weight those rear engine covers are. Yeah, in the immortal words of the infamous Colin Chapman, “Just add more lightness.”

But no matter what they weigh, this olelongrooffan sure wouldn’t want to have to buy one.

Just down the garages a ways was one of my favorite DP teams, The Spirit of Daytona. This olelongrooffan would suspect it’s just as much that they are hometown boys (and girls) but also that I was able to spend a fun filled afternoon with them while having some sausage and cheese a couple years ago. Note the dry tires in the foreground. The previous day while this olelongrooffan was over schleping some trailers, the wets got plenty of use.

And this ole boy was doing some custom body work to the vent on the top of that fender. Yeah, a battery operated drill and some self tapping screws are all that are needed to fasten that vent to the carbon fiber nose cone.

As we were walking down garage road, we spotted a bunch of guys from the Sahlen’s DP team hanging under a pop up canopy and my buddy RJ went over to quiz them as to why Dr. McDreamy was no longer in Grand-Am. Turns out he headed over to the ALMS series to get up to speed on that spec race series in advance of the “merger” of the two series in 2014.

Me? This olelongrooffan really didn’t care about Dr. McDreamy, I was more interested in the fact that Sahlen had switched from Mazdas in the GT category to a full blown Daytona Prototype program with BMW/Rileys. I’m just curious if these are old Gannasi race cars? This olelongrooffan is going to diligently try and determine whether that in fact is true. And while the 42 and 43 DP didn’t seem all that fast on this Saturday, the 42 did record the fastest lap time that day.

And this dude was carrying this sign around trying get every autograph he could on it. While kind of hokey, it is still pretty cool. I asked him what he was going to do with it, thinking ebay or such? He mentioned, “I’m gonna try and get my wife to let  me hang it in the living room.” Unless his wife is The Missus’ sister, this olelongrooffan doesn’t see that happening.

And no trip to the Grand Am series garages is complete without a stop to see what the folks at Turner Motorsports have going on. 

These are their Rolex Series cars and there was a little bit of wrenching going on but the 94 didn’t look a whole lot worse for the wear considering the off I had seen it take earlier in the day.

But it was mostly chow time down there in the yellow garages. This olelongrooffan has got to get The K to get me an introduction to that group. That food looked delicious.

And parked next to those Turner M’s was this SkyActiv Mazda 6 and yes, it is the diesel powered version of it running in the newly created GX class.  We spotted this out on the track a little later and it was almost without exhaust note. All of us commented on that strange occurance. This is the same team who put those headphones on theKid’s head a few years ago during our 3 o’clock in the morning visit to pit road.

And down just a bit further was Turner’s M they run in the Continental Tire Series. Not a soul was around this car. They were all up enjoying some pretty good looking vittles.

By this time, the guys I was checking these garages out with had figured out that this olelongrooffan was looking for something just a bit different to share with my fellow Hoons. TheMickeyMouseDude suggested I grab an image of these thin ass brake rotors on the rear of this 

slightly out of focus Challenger and compare them with the fat, meaty discs up front of this MOPAR.

The fronts were almost twice as thick and had a lot more room for air to flow around and keep things alot cooler up there.

A couple stalls away, this first gen DP was patiently waiting for its practice session to begin. My Cobra driving buddy RJ, asked if this was the old #54 Kodak car. The team member responded in the affirmative but also mentioned it had changed hands so many times that he couldn’t even remember who all had driven or sponsored this “old used car”.

Well, this old used car is to be piloted by Paul Tracy, among others, and it was this car theKid and I saw spin out in the west Horseshoe, right itself and then come into the garage for a 20 minute brake rotor and pad exchange. This olelongrooffan still gets all giddy about seeing that sight so many years ago.

Certified Hoon and Ozarks buff MV commented in my first posting on this event that he was looking forward to seeing more of those Audi R8s. Well there were a bunch, I want to say four or possibly five of them, seemingly all in flat, matte black. Complete with runs and chipped paint.

I made a comment to the Hoons I was with about this and they seemed to “meh” about it. It’s just a race car was their general response. This olelongrooffan is gonna hold the jury out on that thought process until I hear a bit more from my fellow Hoons.

And since this olelongrooffan cannot seem to remember the significance of this Mazda or why the hell I would gather an image of it, I’m gonna close for now and pick this up another time.

Until then.

image copyright Hooniverse 2013/longrooffan