Skip to content

Jan 31, 2013 / reports

JAMES COLBORN REPORTS ON DAYTONA RACE WITH ANDREW JORDAN

What an amazing place Daytona is. It’s huge! Rumor has it that when the NASCAR races happen here, Daytona becomes the 8th largest city in Florida. 500,000 people can pack into here but for us, we’re lucky to have 10% of that. Not a bad number though. In some places, racing draws friends family and the strange bloke walking his dog and so even the smaller number of people is always amazing to see. 

I had already been to Daytona earlier in the month for the practice weekend. My co-driver, Andrew Jordan and I had practiced and he’d demonstrated just how good he was by pretty much topping or setting a top 3 pace the entire weekend. This was going to be an epic race.

Add to this the fact this was my first ever race under the Team Seattle banner and I was looking forward to one of the most amazing weekends of racing I think I’d probably ever have. The excitement and anticipation was unbearable.

We were to race on the Friday before the full Daytona 24 that started the following Saturday afternoon. On the Wednesday, I went out first to get back to being orientated with the track. On lap 2 the gearbox failed (5th gear, an uncommon issue with the Civic) and with a leak found in the engine our car was parked for the remainder of that day for repairs. 

Thursday came around and the 30mins session before qualifying was all Andrew’s time. If he was going to close for us in the race we needed to make sure the car was to his liking and as a result, the first aggressive laps I had were in qualifying. I managed19th (of 36) and while I was pleased, I knew I could have gone faster. 

On a lovely, warm Friday afternoon and with a car festooned with the “Buy a Heart. Save a Life” campaign stickers and sporting the emblem on my race suit I strapped into the car for one of the most anticipated races of my short racing life. It was quite an honor to be flying the flag for Team Seattle and racing to raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital. We were in one of two cars that would be flying the flag and with the exception of Andrew Jordan himself all remaining seats were filled with PRO3 drivers from the Pacific Northwest. 

All week I’d been worrying about turn 1. From 130mph or so (because we weren’t at full speed yet) to 60 in one corner could spell disaster. Funny thing was, on the installation lap my point of view changed. Instead of worrying I decided to look at it as an opportunity and as the green flag fell I went to work taking a spot or two on the start and then getting down to work. 

I was shocked. I was not only competitive but I was having to hold back in corners due to the cars in front not getting their line right. ‘Passing time’ I felt and with some confidence and my usual race style (force a mistake) I managed to make up spots from 19th to around 11th. I was elated. 

Then came the inevitable full course caution.

Convinced my time was over (the minimum time a driver can take is 30mins) and Andrew would be getting in I was alarmed to see that when the pits opened for ST I wasn’t called in. Concerned I my radio wasn’t working I jumped on and said “you’ve left me out, is the radio working, what’s going on?” to which the calm voice of crew chief Steve Wheeler came on the radio and said “we decided to leave you out, you are doing great”. That there was one of my highlights of the weekend. 

Then I realized what was in store for me as the PROs all came out (the closers) with their sticker tires and aggressive driving. I was mobbed but I knew that I needed to keep the car together for Andrew. At first I tried to compete and starting to drive outside of my abilities. The car was ragged and I was using way to much of the brakes (when the ABS kicks in, pad wear is dramatic) and I lost more spots. Now running in about 15th (from 9th) I settled down, started to drive well again and low and behold I started to get some spots back. I was having a blast!

After an hour and 15mins my time was up and handing a good car back to Andrew I sat back and watched him fight up to 7th. Crossing the finish line he could have gone to 4th as they were all in a pack and using the draft on each other but all in all we had a great weekend and amazingly, I won some money (which I later had to give back for some damage earlier in the weekend!).

Daytona was a success for me personally and I am pleased to report that we raised $100,000 to boot giving us a really good start to the 2013 Team Seattle program.

Thanks to James for his report, originally published on his blog, jamescolborn.com.