#42 Eurosport Racing Elan DP02: Jim Garrett (Darren Pierson)

It’s 43F this morning in Palm Beach! Brrr, man! I’m standing out in pit lane without coffee wondering what the heck is going on with the temperature today, yesterday the air was on, now its the heat, weird. Not too many Prototypes here at the fest, so I have been pushing myself to think past the cars. I think what I came back with from the first session today is some of the best from the weekend. Time for breakfast and then back out at 11:50.

#65 Acadia Racing Elan DP02: Lamont Harris (Darren Pierson)

Image gallery for the Winterfest Weekend

#06 CORE Autosport Oreca FLM09: Anthony Downs, Lucas Downs, Matt Downs (Darren Pierson)

In 2011, we didn’t arrive at Winter Testing until tuesday, so we missed out on the IMSA Lites testing. That wasn’t really an option this year, so we made sure to arrive early on Sunday. We landed outside the track, grilled some hot wings and watched the Super Bowl. For fun, our DirecTV receiver decided to die during Madonna’s halftime show. Thankfully, it took little time to fire up my MAC and pull in the show via our slingbox we have set up at her parent’s house. We only missed a song or two. Also there was more football afterward, but since the Steelers were not playing, we didn’t pay much attention other than to be happy the Patriots lost.

Winter Testing is a rather odd thing to attend. The track is in a testing setup, so many of the fences and barriers are absent. There are no wall to wall RVs to shoot against. Quite a few of the teams and drivers are not there. The track is nearly empty of fans. Most obvious is the lack of livery on the cars.  Many are brand new, squeaky white and devoid of color. They are not really the cars that you want to see. You must look to the drivers themselves, the crews, the garages. Create.

The sun was being a PITA, by that I mean it hid behind a wall of clouds all week. Bitchy aren’t I?

Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to Cooper Prototype Lites and IMSA GT3 Challenge. I spent the morning of Monday shooting the cars on track and most of the rest of the two days working the pits and their garages. I think some strong shots came from spending time away from the track and the safety of shooting the cars.

Tristan Nunez (Darren Pierson)

Shooting the crews at work in the garages is an unusual experience in itself, they tend to be amused by the attention and often say things like “Why do you want a picture of me? I’m just a mechanic” I’ve never had any problems with access though, a simple request to come in and shoot was all it ever took. I suppose if I kicked a few things over they might send me on my way, but so far I have been able to avoid breaking things.

Looking back at my shots from last year, it seems like there were more GT3 teams in attendance in 2011, but since I didn’t count them, I cannot be sure. It was simply a feeling that the car count was lower across all of the classes. Hopefully that is not an indication of the state of the series for 2012, as indications at the end of the season were positive. I guess we will see at the 12 Hours.

#36 TPC Racing Porsche GTC: Michael Levitas (Darren Pierson)

The last two days of testing were dedicated to the ALMS cars.  There were some interesting driver/car happenings such as the Downs brothers from Cooper Lites in in the CORE #06 LMPC but again, the car count seemed low.  With the obvious absence of the RSR Jags, most of the GT2 regulars were there. The only P1 car on the entry list was the Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a and unless I was asleep during part of the last day, its only appearance was sporadically though the last session of the week. Although disappointing, it did run some fairly good times with its fastest lap being 1:48.192 which is not far from the qualifying time of the Audi R15+ of McNish at the 2011 running of the Sebring 12 Hours. Winner of the the least interesting fact category: the 055 HPD ARX-03 of Tucker/Bouchut/Diaz bested the 95 HPD ARX-03 of Tucker/Bouchut/Diaz by nearly 2 10ths.  I am happy to hear that AJR will be running a Lotus on GT2 this year, that should be fun to watch.

We are off to Palm Springs International Raceway to cover the Cooper Tires Winterfest.  See you there!

#6 Muscle Milk Pickett Racing HPD ARX-03a: Lucas Luhr, Klaus Graf, Simon Pagenaud (Darren Pierson)

All of my Galleries can be viewed at dPerceptions MotorSports Photography

Cooper Prototype Lites

IMSA GT3 Challenge

ALMS

#36 Yellow Dragon Motorsports Mazda RX-8: Jarett Andretti, John Andretti, Taylor Hacquard, Anders Krohn (Darren Pierson)

Um Houston….we might have a problem. The grid walk at the 24 Hours of Daytona last year resembled the Grand Prix of Utah, not a whole lot of people, a couple of thousand, maybe. This year, the walk was wall to wall people.  People on the track, people on the grid, people on the grass…..thousands and thousands of people. Many, many thousands. At a Grand-AM race.  No kidding. The race itself was quite good as well, we might have to start to make a habit of this. Maybe.

The support series for Grand-AM, the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, ran the BMW Performance 200 on Friday.  Much like their qualifying session, the race was filled with what seemed like endless yellow flag running.  I ran around the grid for a bit before hopping into the Stevenson Motorsports box to shoot the start of the race. Kudos to them for letting me into their space.

Race Start Race Start - BMW Performance 200 (Darren Pierson)

It was lightly raining during the grid walk and just before the start of the Conti race, the officials let the cars go out and run two test laps to decide whether to start on wets or drys. I found this to be a bit strange, but I imagine they were trying to keep the crash count at a minimum. In my experience, you guess on tires and if you are right you look like a genius and if you are wrong…well, you know what happens then.

Saturday is dedicated to the Grand-AM race and there are no other support series or non Grand-AM activities happening, not even a morning warmup.  The 24 starts fairly late in the day at 3:30 PM EST, so the morning of the race is fairly leisurely as compared to most of the events we shoot.  We headed down to the grid walk about an hour before the start and were greeted by the mass of people I described at the start of this post.  It was crowded to say the least. We strolled about for a bit shooting drivers at their cars and soaking in the atmosphere. I had staked out a space in the ARJ box so that I could shoot the start, but as the time ran down, more and more VIP type people kept crowding around me and I realized that someone was certain to jump in my way and &*&!*(%*^#! my start picture. I ran out of the ARJ tent and went up a few to the Oryx Racing box and was able to quickly obtain permission to get in their way and shoot the start.  A big thanks to them, I wish them and their Audi R8 a great maiden season in Grand-AM. All was well, I got in, got the start of both classes and got out.  Mission accomplished for 10 minutes or so.

Saeed Al Mehairi and Steven Kane (Darren Pierson)

We dinked about the International Horseshoe for a bit and then headed along the track up to T5.  The plan was to shoot until sunset and then head back to the RV for food.  I intended to actually shoot the sun setting, but messed up my timing. Happily, I was able to wrangle admittance to the top of a motorhome and shot the late day glow as a background against the oval T1 banking.  Not what I originally intended, but it worked out.

TIME PASSES

I got up at 5AM to go work the pits and to shoot the sunrise. There was no coffee in the media center…..

#77 Doran Racing Ford Dallara: Brian Frisselle, Burt Frisselle, Jim Lowe, Paul Tracy (Darren Pierson)

If you have ever shot at Daytona, you know that the teams set up walled tent enclosures around their boxes. This makes it extremely difficult to see up the pit lane and to know who is going to pit.  You have to run up and down pit lane sticking your head in and out of the team enclosures.  Not much fun to be honest.  When I arrived in the pits at 5darkAM, there had been enough attrition during the night that many boxes were empty and I could camp out and look for the telltale wormsign of lolly pops in motion.  Hmm, a Herbert reference. I had some fun watching a DP brake/rotor change.  It took less than a minute. As the morning went on, the sky started to lighten and I checked the media center again, still no coffee.  Drag.  Last year, the sunrise was occluded by a giant fog bank; today, I faced only a huge wall of clouds.  Neither was optimal, but the clouds were better than the yellow flag inducing fog. I kept on shooting past the sunrise hoping for that nice warm morning glow, but the sporadic cloud cover was causing me grief.  I went back to the RV about 8AM and resurfaced just before the finish.

#93 Turner Motorsport BMW M3: Bill Auberlen, Paul Dalla Lana, Michael Marsal, Dirk Muller, Jorg Muller (Darren Pierson)

My two Galleries from the Rolex 24 weekend can be found at dPerceptions Motorsports Photography

Conti Challenge

Grand AM

Somehow I doubt the sun will have much impact in this morning’s shooting.  Hope the clouds go away for the Conti race this afternoon

#94 Turner Motorsport BMW M3: Bill Auberlen, Paul Dalla Lana, Matt Plumb, Boris Said

The time between Christmas and New Year’s is a bit weird. Its like non time. Things happen, but it seems like they don’t have to. We are sitting in Arizona wondering why its so cold here since we came this way on purpose.  Its been warmer in our old stomping grounds of Athens, GA.  Bah, maybe I will go kick a cactus or something.

Part of the last few days has been working out our travel schedule for 2012. Assuming we don’t lose our minds and drive down to the Dakar (not likely) the 24 Hours of Daytona will be the first stop on our spring January tour. Last year was the first time we shot the race (or attended it for that matter) and we were pleased by the dry weather. After watching many cold and rainy Daytona 24Hs on television, we were expecting it to be cold and wet.

#41 Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8: Dane Cameron, James Gue, Ian James, Don Kitch Jr., Dave Lacey (Darren Pierson)

Aside from the extra long fog delay that burned off just after sunrise, the weekend was without weather interference. I imagine that since everything went so smoothly last year, and I also mentioned it here, the weather gods will be after us.  We will miss the Roar since we are staying out West as long as possible, but look for update posts starting on Wednesday the 25th.

See you at the Track!

Sunrise at the 2011 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona

-Darren

2011 Year In The Pits – Images by Darren Pierson

2011 Petit Le Mans Race Start Race Start (Darren Pierson)

The ILMC/WEC races are starting to have an IndyCar weekend feel to them. The faster cars show up and bring a self-important, aren’t you glad we are here, now go away we are busy vibe. I like the fact that there are so many international entrants, but somehow the Audi vs. Peugeot thing seems to overshadow the rest of the week. Look at the picture to the left, thats the start of the race, the 1st and only seven cars in the field of view are ILMC cars.  The 1st ALMS regular was 9th on the grid. Not sure what to think about that, but I do think the Diesel vs Petrol controversy needs a leveling. I’m not completely convinced that the disparity between the diesels and everyone else is simply that fact that Audi and Peugeot have put umpteen Euros into development of the cars.  Certainly that is a huge factor, but I don’t think its the whole story. On the bright side, as my wife pointed out, having the ILMC cars in town certainly brings up the scarf count in Braselton.

#8 Performance Tech Cooper Prototype Lite: Tristan Nunez (Darren Pierson)

Cooper Lites started out bright and early on Tuesday and both Cooper and GT3 had morning as well as afternoon sessions.  It was a good day to get the feel of the track and to get solid shots of all of the cars.  During the morning session, Tristan Nunez’s car caught on fire while on track.  It looked pretty comprehensive, but luckily his crew was able to get him back on track. Like the last several race weekends I was going to be swamped with Cooper and GT3 coverage, so my plan was to stick to Night Practice, Quali and the Race for my ALMS shooting. This turned out to be a reasonable trade off as both Cooper and GT3 were having their season end banquets.

Several new pieces of safety fence had been added to the track, small sections to protect the flag stands at six and seven, and most notably, a huge section running from turn one all the way up to turn two. Shooting from ground level at turn one has always been a bit dangerous. Yes you are behind k-wall and have some time to move back if a car overshoots the turn, but I wouldn’t want to test the theory.

#62 Snow Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup: Madison Snow (Darren Pierson)

The photo stand that is set up for turn one is pretty worthless photographically as only half of the platform can see up the front straight without obstruction. The fence is easy enough to shoot though, so rather than elbow with people I tend to shoot the starts from the ground level or from elsewhere. As you can see from the first picture, I shot the start of the ALMS race this year from the bottom of the esses and I think it made for a dramatic image.

Its been a long several weeks and to be honest, I am looking forward to not having a destination to push towards after this race. It will be nice to have a weekend just be a weekend. Perhaps. For a little bit. Then we have to start planning, the Rolex 24 hour isn’t that far away. You can view all of my motorsports work at dPerceptions. Galleries for all three series can be accessed via the links below.

Thanks for following along all season, we will see you at the track in 2012.

#05 Core Autosport Oreca FLM09: Jon Bennett, Frankie Montecalvo, Ryan Dalziel (Darren Pierson)

Cooper Entire Week

GT3 Entire Week

ALMS Highlights – ALMS Entire Week

Turn one is suddenly sporting a catch fence. I am not surprised as shooting in T1 at ground level is quite dangerous.  There isn’t much decent room on the riser though. Should be a few angry photographers come Saturday morning.