Oh and here's an interesting article on the "fun" the teams had leading up to the race:
http://www.gordonkirby.com/categories/columns/theway/2014/the_way_it_is_no418.html
"For my coverage of the Rolex 24 Hours please go to www.motorsportmagazine.com. In this space this week I'm going to discuss the intense state of displeasure that permeated the garage area at Daytona last weekend where all the Daytona Prototype and LMP2 teams were beside themselves with the late arrival and constant changes made through last week to the Tudor United SportsCar Series rules.
I heard an earful from many people in the garage at Daytona and decided to sit down for a pair of thorough discussions about the teams' worries with Chip Ganassi's sports car team manager Tim Keene and Extreme Speed's director of operations Rob Hill. Ganassi's team races Ford V6 turbo-powered Riley Daytona Prototypes while Extreme Speed runs HPD ARX-03b-Honda P2 cars so Keene and Hill provide perspective from both sides of the TUSC's performance-balancing game.
"The most frustrating thing for us is the rules administration keeps giving us a very limited amount of time to respond," Keene commented. "They keep issuing new technical bulletins asking to make changes in an impossibly short space of time.
"We know this is a work in progress. But they're trying to balance the performance too much and make all the cars the same where we would rather see something that said: here's your low downforce number and here's your high downforce number and let us decide where we want to run in between those numbers. That's what we would like to see rather than the sanctioning body telling us we have to run this amount of downforce. You've got to allow the teams to play with it.
© LAT/Paul Webb "You can make a driver who's not as good look even worse when he has to try to drive the same car that's been balanced in performance. But you make it a driver's series rather than a car racing series. You can't balance the performance of the drivers. There are faster drivers and slower drivers.
"In the past, we've always had the ability to change your car to fit your driver. You build your race car to fit your driver and not all drivers are the same. If you make all the cars the same then it just becomes a driver's series rather than a racing series among teams and drivers with different cars.
"I don't disagree with them setting limits on how low or high we can go on downforce but I very much disagree with them trying to limit us to a certain amount rather than allowing us to run different levels of downforce. I think all series are making the same mistake--Formula One, NASCAR and IndyCar as well.
"I think they're trying so hard to make it equal that they're actually making it worse. They think you're up to something when it's really just your driver is faster than the other guy. They forget about the driver but the driver has a lot to do with how fast a race car goes.
"I've had dinner with Robert Yates and his guys and they say it would be a lot easier for them to run with Hendrick and the other big teams if NASCAR would open up the rules rather than trying to make all the cars be the same. Yates believes they could more competitive at more tracks if NASCAR would allow them to play around a bit and I'm sure they're right from what I've seen here.
"The sanctioning body is trying to do our jobs for us, which is frustrating. It's up to us to balance performance, not them. There's got be some rules but we have too many. You've got to open up the box or window so it's not too small to get through."
Rob Hill agrees with Keene about the late arrival of the rules and constant fiddling through the start of the race at Daytona.
"The merger was announced nearly eighteen months ago and we waited six months for them to come out with a name," Hill began. "That was a big thing and they all patted themselves on the back. Then we waited for a rule package to come out to adapt our ALMS P2 cars to the new series. We waited and waited and the most recent package came out a few weeks ago which is ridiculous because it doesn't give anyone any time to build parts or test.
"They decided with great intentions that they wanted to give the DPs more downforce and more horsepower, thinking that the downforce would slow them down on the straightaway and the horsepower would make up for the difference. They said they were going to leave the P2 cars more or less alone.
"We came down here for the test in November and it was a complete disaster because they put diffusers on the cars and gave them more front downforce but didn't think about the car in a yaw situation when the car steps out and the loading goes into the tires and so on. So the DP cars were blowing tires, getting airborne and flying into the catch fence. When you put all that extra load and horsepower, it wasn't surprising to see what happened.
"After the test we all went away for Thanksgiving thinking we wouldn't come back to Daytona until 'The Roar' in early January. But immediately after Thanksgiving the USC told us they wanted us to test here in December. We had not budgeted for that test. One day of running costs roughly $50,000 in wear and tear, tires, hotels and so forth. But the series decided we had to be here, so we came here and took part in their test. Afterward, they didn't tell us anything about any conclusions or decisions they had made.
"In my opinion, they didn't do their homework. None of that should ever have happened. Some very intelligent companies offered to come up with a process for merging that cars that would have made them compatible. But the series decided they didn't want to use any of those people. Instead, they waited until the twelfth hour and keep putting out technical bulletins which expect us to jump through hoops to make it happen."
Keene said his team's working relationship with the TUSC's Scot Elkins and his technical people is not good.
"When they deal with teams, especially with us, they always act like we're trying to pull something over on them," Keene remarked. "Whenever we do anything to the car they want to know why we would want to do that. They don't understand that we also want to it to be competitive. We don't want to go out there and smoke everybody's ass because that's not going to be good for the series or good for us. We want it to be competitive.
"You know, there's not a lot of trust left in motor racing. There used to be a lot of trust in the paddock. You could talk to people pretty candidly and they got it. But now, everybody looks at you with a sour eye. They don't trust you. It's like the government. They want to do it for you. They don't think you can take care of yourself.
"They need to understand that if a guy is talking to you candidly he's telling you the truth. If you know what you're talking about, you know how to make that judgement. But if you don't know what you're talking about you're not going to understand that this guy is telling the truth and not messing with you. And they don't understand enough to know whether you're messing with them or not."
Hill feels the same way about his working relationship with the TUSC. He believes the TUSC don't understand the financial realities of racing.
"I'm a little disappointed in their mentality because they are now mandating this is what it is," Hill said. "Our cars were on the ground last weekend ready to go to the racetrack on Tuesday to go through technical inspection according to the specifications they had mandated. Then they told us we had to be here on Monday even though we didn't run until Thursday, which increases the costs in hotel bills and rebooking flights.
"When we got here they told us we couldn't run this and that. We showed them the rulebook and said what we had done was correct and they said, 'No, that's not what we're doing.' We don't know from day to day what spec our car is supposed to be and I don't understand how they think this way of doing business is going to be fine.
"I don't envy them their job, but they took it on. They walk around patting themselves on the back without offering any assistance. Financially we haven't been hit as hard as the DP teams who've had to make all these development pieces, put them on the car and were then told to take them off.
"I think the thought process for the series going forward is that they're looking at the next minute. They are not looking down the road for the product they want at the end of the year. Instead they're forcing things on us that should have happened a year ago without any thought about the costs or resources that are needed to adapt to what they're mandating.
"Initially, they told us we had to run a low downforce kit. To build that kit is expensive because you've got to make molds and get the pieces built. It's a two week process to change the fenders on our car but the people at United SportsCar seem to think we can do that overnight.
"We approached them about it, but they didn't seem to care. It's their way or the highway and they don't seem to care about any of the problems they've given the teams. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that the teams put on the show and make the sport."
Hill believes it would have been smart to start this year without any rule changes and begin to make adjustments later in the season."
