The third annual Oktober-Fast PCA club race was held at Daytona International Speedway on October 10-12, 2008. I packed up the trailer and the entire family and we arrived in Daytona with dark clouds and thunderstorms. As Amy and I unloaded the GT3R from the trailer and put it in the garage, the voice on the loudspeaker said to batton down the garages because tornadoes were spotted on the ground nearby. A torential rain broke out. We were soaked, but no tornadoes were seen. The kids in the truck thought it was quite funny- mom and dad closing up the trailer in the rain. Luckily the weather cooperated the rest of the weekend. There were two race classes, the red and blue groups, and the DE group. We were driving on the Rolex 24 course that utilizes all 4 Nascar corners, plus the infield. The three groups alternated time on the track over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. There were a total of 40 of us registered for the DE group. It was supposed to be all Porsches, but somehow an old Firebird racecar, a Ford GT, a Nissan GTR, and a new M3 got out there with us. There were a lot of drivers meetings for the DE group, led by Ron Zitza. Early in the weekend the passing zones were restricted, but as everyone got more comfortable, they were expanded. As my confidence grew I began to carry a lot more speed through the banking and was seeing 165 mph after the start finish line before braking at the "1" marker and downshifitng for turn one. There were a few incidents in the DE group including a GT3 that was in front of me in Nascar turn 4 when his right rear tire blew out and he went into the wall at the top of the banking hard. There was debris all over the track. I was able to get some braking done from 140 mph and went straight through what looked like the least amount of debris high on the track. After a careful inspection of all 4 tires and the underside of my car, I was able to determine I did not pick up any debris or do any damage to my car.
The rest of the weekend was not nearly as exciting, but we got to watch the red and blue groups race, buy Porsche t-shirts, hats, stickers, etc from the vendors that were there, and eat the usual tasty track food. The weekend was sponsored by Porsche of Melbourne and they had an assortment of new Porsches there including some PDK equipped cars which could be test driven on the small handling track just inside turn 4. It was good to see my DE and club racer friends and all the Porsche owners who came to Daytona to watch the racing. Oktober-Fast is defintitely something I will be adding to my calendar to do each year. Another event coming up at Daytona that a lot of PCA members are going to is the Audi Club Nationals December 11-14, 2008.
