Daytona Beach, Florida - January 10th, 2016: After 12 grueling hours of racing around the famous Daytona International Speedway, both Aston Martin Vantage GTEs are still going strong, with the #43 holding 6th in class tightly. Before Daytona, however, we forgot to report that we would be replacing drivers in both cars due to deals falling through.
Replacing Nobuteru Taniguchi will be Nanami Kanzaki from the Tsuchigami no Kyojin GT300 effort, and a fourth driver, Tom Rockford, a free agent, has been added to the #43 driver roster. Kyle Busch and Tatsuya Kataoka remain in the car.
The #44 has had an absolute revamp, with only Miku Hatsune staying in that seat. Replacing Izawa and Orido is Suzuka Tsuchigami and Yui Narumi.
Tatsuya Kataoka qualified the #43 car in 10th for today, while Miku Hatsune proved that she had learned quickly, qualifying the #44 car in 18th.
With Kyle Busch and Suzuka Tsuchigami taking the first stints of the race, the two AMR cars went their separate ways. Kyle Busch charged up to a top 5 spot, with Tsuchigami struggling a bit with the car. The #44 dropped even further back when switching over to Miku Hatsune with 2 hours in the race, going as low as 37th overall.
However, things seem to be improving for our #44 camp, with the car coming into itself in the night time. The car was last seen in 28th overall.
What is most commendable is that we have had little problems with the cars! Despite a little bit of damage to the rears of the cars, both the #43 and #44 have been soldering on through the night. There was a little panic with the #95 Ravenwest Aston Martin retiring due to a critical Gearbox failure, but the Goodsmile team is hopefully assured that we will go on to see the daylight.
The drivers have criticized the setup, however. Tom Rockford mentions a bit of a speed difference.
"Like, when I was on the really fast part, I can barely get the car to like, top out or whatever it's called, man. I've been racing that 94 car and I was like, 'Yo, what's wrong with the car, bro?' Like, the car is nice and stuff, but like, it's pretty slow man, and that's not cool, man."
Team Engineer, Guillermo Vega, added with his thoughts on the setup with 10 hours in.
"We see a very apparent disadvantage; the cars have too much downforce. I've talked to some of our drivers and they all have mentioned that we are losing speed in the oval parts of the track. Comparing the other Aston Martin entry, it's apparent that we were too safe with our setup."
With 13 hours logged into the race, it will be interesting to see how we can cope with the cars!
, can't get over a cars weakness that much
👍
