Wow this was a strange catalog of events over the last few days.
Lisa and myself went to Florida for Christmas and at the last minute just before we left she changed from going to Cocoa Beach to Daytona and this started a stage series of events.
Next as we were staying across the road from the Stadium Lisa said about going on a tour around the “empty†stadium and I said no, but we still went!
On the tour I heard that the IMSA cars were qualifying for the Daytona 24 hours on the Friday but we were coming home on the Friday so I wasn’t going to go to that either!
Next on the Thursday night we went into a full restaurant that was full so we walked out but then decided to go back and wait and then bizarrely four of the Mazda Motorsports Team members sat in the next booth behind us ! Me being me, I had to have a chat with them and this resulted in them telling us, that we simply had to pay them a visit at the track before going home.
We arrived just half an hour before the cars we due on track and was amazed at the size of the Mazda Motorsports Joest team with four large FI style artic that are so much longer than we see in Europe.
I was supprised that this close to the off that the Team Manager Brad who is an ex-Rotary Racer took time out to show me around the cars in the garage and then inside the trailers to show me how the whole operation comes together on race day, to give you an idea of amount of personnel he showed me the station for the 100+ Walkie talkies that are used during the races.
After this Marc who oversees the team and is a Joest director of Joest who runs the team on behalf of Mazda took us to the command center and chatted about racing for 20 minutes or so.
Huge thanks to the guys who made us so welcome but how bizarre that we ended up at the track with Mazda and we didn’t even know they were going to be there.
Best of all the cars have just qualified 1st and 2nd for the race at the end of the month.
https://www.facebook.com/mazdamotorsporthttps://www.facebook.com/mazdamotorsport/videos/774548756392993/Didn’t believe in fate, but I suppose I will have to now