Grand Am Daytona Prototype
Race 1
Race 2
Race 3
Race 4
Race 5
Race 6
Race 7
Final Points
Top 3 & Race Reports
Round 1 - Stratton Valley - 6/6/23
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Bruce Thomas
3rd - Dave Schofield
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Bruce Thomas
3rd - Dave Schofield
Round 1 - Report
From the sublime (well, maybe not THAT sublime) to the ridiculous. The contrast between the low speed, easy to follow & drive Scalex GT cars and the new series of lightning fast, twitchy & spoiler destroying cars that make up the Grand-Am class was extremely vivid.
For the Marshalls, it felt as though the fast forward button had been pressed & was running at 8x speed as they required eyes everywhere to keep track of the cars as they hurtled around, and quite often hurtled off the track.
Things most in danger of being damaged, apart from the Marshalls) were the rear spoilers on this class, and I’ll be predicting than by round 3 or 4 that there won’t be many rear spoilers left gracing the bodywork on any of the participants vehicles. Then comes the problem of which way round to put these things back on track…..can’t wait for all this !
In the first race of the series however, Phil did, in fact, hurtle mostly around the track & with regular sub 6.0 laps finished 2 laps clear in 1st on 85 laps. Bruce’s preparation of not touching the car for 2 years seems to have once again paid dividends and although dropping off the pace slightly after a great 29 lap first heat, racked up enough laps (83) to slot into a comfortable 2nd place. Dave Schofields car also proved very quick, and were it not for a couple of untimely de-slots he could well have figured even higher than his 3rd place over (81 laps). He will be a threat as the series progresses.
Dave Bantoft fronted up for this first heat in his traditional manner of telling anyone who’d listen (not many, by the way) about - how low his expectations are, how far down the results he’d be & how he‘s at all fussed about this series given how uncompetitive he’ll be. Woe, woe, woe………and then proceeded to match the best times of the top end of the field & rack up 79 laps for 4th spot.
I think we’ve all seen through this act now DB.
Rhys also proved that his car will be a good runner this series, and although his absolute top end speed was not quite there, his smooth driving with few mistakes allowed him a 5th place finish on 78 laps.
Scotty circulated well in 6th (same laps as Rhys) & showed also that his car does have good speed and a few rounds with a few less de-slots will have him pushing well into the top bracket of drivers in the series as we progress.
1 lap back on 77 laps, & in 7th was the writers car, and I’m pleased to report that it took the prize this year for being the first Grand-AM car to decimate its rear spoiler. It wasn’t the last on the night, but it will be last time for this car…..it will be running sans-spoiler for the rest of the series.
John Batich grabbed 8th spot on 75 laps, with Dave Gray 9th on 57 & Thomas Males in 10th this week on 55.
I fear for some of Phils scenery next week………
From the sublime (well, maybe not THAT sublime) to the ridiculous. The contrast between the low speed, easy to follow & drive Scalex GT cars and the new series of lightning fast, twitchy & spoiler destroying cars that make up the Grand-Am class was extremely vivid.
For the Marshalls, it felt as though the fast forward button had been pressed & was running at 8x speed as they required eyes everywhere to keep track of the cars as they hurtled around, and quite often hurtled off the track.
Things most in danger of being damaged, apart from the Marshalls) were the rear spoilers on this class, and I’ll be predicting than by round 3 or 4 that there won’t be many rear spoilers left gracing the bodywork on any of the participants vehicles. Then comes the problem of which way round to put these things back on track…..can’t wait for all this !
In the first race of the series however, Phil did, in fact, hurtle mostly around the track & with regular sub 6.0 laps finished 2 laps clear in 1st on 85 laps. Bruce’s preparation of not touching the car for 2 years seems to have once again paid dividends and although dropping off the pace slightly after a great 29 lap first heat, racked up enough laps (83) to slot into a comfortable 2nd place. Dave Schofields car also proved very quick, and were it not for a couple of untimely de-slots he could well have figured even higher than his 3rd place over (81 laps). He will be a threat as the series progresses.
Dave Bantoft fronted up for this first heat in his traditional manner of telling anyone who’d listen (not many, by the way) about - how low his expectations are, how far down the results he’d be & how he‘s at all fussed about this series given how uncompetitive he’ll be. Woe, woe, woe………and then proceeded to match the best times of the top end of the field & rack up 79 laps for 4th spot.
I think we’ve all seen through this act now DB.
Rhys also proved that his car will be a good runner this series, and although his absolute top end speed was not quite there, his smooth driving with few mistakes allowed him a 5th place finish on 78 laps.
Scotty circulated well in 6th (same laps as Rhys) & showed also that his car does have good speed and a few rounds with a few less de-slots will have him pushing well into the top bracket of drivers in the series as we progress.
1 lap back on 77 laps, & in 7th was the writers car, and I’m pleased to report that it took the prize this year for being the first Grand-AM car to decimate its rear spoiler. It wasn’t the last on the night, but it will be last time for this car…..it will be running sans-spoiler for the rest of the series.
John Batich grabbed 8th spot on 75 laps, with Dave Gray 9th on 57 & Thomas Males in 10th this week on 55.
I fear for some of Phils scenery next week………
*In the absence of photos taken (sorry) for the new class this week, I managed to find some photos of these cars on the wonderful world of the internet. To keep you happy until I rectify this mistake next week:
I even managed to find Grand-Am cars that have been featured in a quite well known movie & a long running TV series:
Round 2 - Shelmore Park - 13/6/23
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Callan Thomas
3rd - Bruce Thomas
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Callan Thomas
3rd - Bruce Thomas
Round 2 - Report
A small but enthusiastic array of drivers gathered this week at Shelmore Park week for 2nd round of the plastic destroying, spoiler smashing series that is otherwise known as Grand-Am.
This week certainly didn’t disappoint on the destruction front either, as the photo of the top 3 for the week (above) highlights perfectly. In fact, if the results for the week were only taken from cars that finished with all body parts intact, it would have been a very different top 3 hey Bruce ?
As it was, Phil “Lefty” Kalbfell managed to overcome the loss of the entire left hand side of his rear spoiler to rack up another convincing win this week. Perhaps it was a tactical move & this “setup” suited the track perfectly? Whatever the thinking, it certainly worked as Phil racked up 116.58 laps to finish well clear of Callan “The Tilt” Thomas who finished 3 laps back on 113.2 in 2nd place. In the first actual unblemished car for the night, Bruce Thomas finished in a well-deserved third place with his total of 110.4 laps thus proving that efficient airflow over slots cars doesn’t seem to matter one iota.
Dave Bantoft (ironically) once again proved that his car is nowhere near as bad as he’d have us all believe, and was good enough to slot into 4th spot for the 2nd week in a row on 108.3 laps.
As for myself, my car is as bad as I’d have everyone believe, and so during the week I pulled out all stops in giving my vehicle a complete upgrade. Complete engine replacement, completely new rear tyres and significant weight readjustment. There is something quite satisfying though, after having invested so much time & effort in working on & tweaking a car to see the results of all this hard work bear fruit……with a result that this week there was little or no improvement from last week at all. In fact I actually dropped 1 lap overall to DB…..and finished in 5th spot (105.7 laps) on the night. Can I have all that time back now?
Just 1 lap back on 104.8 was Dave Schofield. Schoee has obviously gone down the same path as me with the result that any work he's done on his car had the effect of dropping him from 3rd last week to 6th this round. I feel your frustration Schoee……
In 7th this week, Rhys’s total of 103.8 laps saw him claim the position from JB (8th) by a sceric with JB finishing on 103.7, or about 10 centimeters. Slotting into 9th place, Scott Wyman notched up 92.99 laps (which is as close to 93 laps as you can ever see) with Thomas Males rounding out the top 10 (and the field) this week on 86.02 laps for the night.
A small but enthusiastic array of drivers gathered this week at Shelmore Park week for 2nd round of the plastic destroying, spoiler smashing series that is otherwise known as Grand-Am.
This week certainly didn’t disappoint on the destruction front either, as the photo of the top 3 for the week (above) highlights perfectly. In fact, if the results for the week were only taken from cars that finished with all body parts intact, it would have been a very different top 3 hey Bruce ?
As it was, Phil “Lefty” Kalbfell managed to overcome the loss of the entire left hand side of his rear spoiler to rack up another convincing win this week. Perhaps it was a tactical move & this “setup” suited the track perfectly? Whatever the thinking, it certainly worked as Phil racked up 116.58 laps to finish well clear of Callan “The Tilt” Thomas who finished 3 laps back on 113.2 in 2nd place. In the first actual unblemished car for the night, Bruce Thomas finished in a well-deserved third place with his total of 110.4 laps thus proving that efficient airflow over slots cars doesn’t seem to matter one iota.
Dave Bantoft (ironically) once again proved that his car is nowhere near as bad as he’d have us all believe, and was good enough to slot into 4th spot for the 2nd week in a row on 108.3 laps.
As for myself, my car is as bad as I’d have everyone believe, and so during the week I pulled out all stops in giving my vehicle a complete upgrade. Complete engine replacement, completely new rear tyres and significant weight readjustment. There is something quite satisfying though, after having invested so much time & effort in working on & tweaking a car to see the results of all this hard work bear fruit……with a result that this week there was little or no improvement from last week at all. In fact I actually dropped 1 lap overall to DB…..and finished in 5th spot (105.7 laps) on the night. Can I have all that time back now?
Just 1 lap back on 104.8 was Dave Schofield. Schoee has obviously gone down the same path as me with the result that any work he's done on his car had the effect of dropping him from 3rd last week to 6th this round. I feel your frustration Schoee……
In 7th this week, Rhys’s total of 103.8 laps saw him claim the position from JB (8th) by a sceric with JB finishing on 103.7, or about 10 centimeters. Slotting into 9th place, Scott Wyman notched up 92.99 laps (which is as close to 93 laps as you can ever see) with Thomas Males rounding out the top 10 (and the field) this week on 86.02 laps for the night.
Round 3 - Mornington Park - 20/6/23
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Bruce Thomas
3rd - Mal O'May
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Bruce Thomas
3rd - Mal O'May
Round 4 - GothamPark - 27/6/23
1st - Bruce Thomas
2nd - Phil Kalbfell
3rd - Mal O'May
1st - Bruce Thomas
2nd - Phil Kalbfell
3rd - Mal O'May
Round 4 - Report
The main story line of the Grand-Am round for this week started quite early in the evening, prior even to the commencement of racing.
In early Grand-Am practice, some drivers found it quite difficult to:
This all led to some friendly banter from the track owner involving some “deep guide” comments and resulted in the Track Owner performing some last minute surgery on the recalcitrant areas of lane 4 to remove the chunks of glue that had somehow become lodged in the bottom of the slot, thus causing most of the problems.
The next slight issue was with the equipment used to “clear” these chunks of glue & mdf from the slot. The handheld vac certainly picked up the glue & mdf most efficiently, however the expelling of a fine layer of sawdust all over the track from the rear of the vacuum cleaner was NOT ideal & led to a complete re-clean of the track & the re-rubbering of all lanes via some intensive work from drivers before (& during) racing.
ANYWay, as the Grand-Am cars were 2nd series run for the night, there would be no further issues on this front would there ?
For the most part, no, everything went reasonably smoothly & it was the local track knowledge & a smooth handling car that worked the magic for Bruce Thomas this week with this total of 107 laps good enough to take the win. However, there was a slight glitch for Bruce as in a reminder of earlier troubles, his car did actually take some prompting at one stage to get past one certain section of the track (slot). Dave Schofield was seen soon after in a corner trying very hard to stifle his mirth.
Phil Kalbfell fell to 2nd this week & was 2 laps down on Bruce with this total of 105 laps, which was another 2 laps clear of the writers car in 3rd on 103 laps for the night.
A tight battle for 4th again featured John Batich tied with another driver, this time Schoee. Unluckily for JB he missed out once again on track position & it was Schoee who finished 4th ahead of JB in 5th both on 96 laps. 1 lap further back & in 6th, on 95 laps, was Adrian Gray who found out quite quickly that 1 de-slot off the edge of the track instantly reduced your tyre grip to Zero. Something that all drivers attempted to avoid at all cost from then on, but with differing levels of success. That some even resorted to coming in for a quick mid-race pitstop for tyre cleaning says something about how much the grip was affected by any excursion.
In 7th, DB racked up 93 laps, 4 laps ahead of Dave Gray in a good 8th on 89, and Rhys in 9th on 87 laps. Scott struggled with grip signifagantly towards the end of all of his heats & ended up 10th on 82 laps.
Thomas Males finished 11th on 67, and had his lap count reduced by major mechanical problems on lane 2, which saw him only notch up 2 laps. Which was a huge shame as his car seemed very well sorted this week, and during his 25 lap stint on lane 3 looked at times as though it was running on rails…….or magnets.
The main story line of the Grand-Am round for this week started quite early in the evening, prior even to the commencement of racing.
In early Grand-Am practice, some drivers found it quite difficult to:
- progress around the corner at the end of the main straight without de-slotting & barrelling straight ahead no matter what cornering speed was used.
- progress past the start finish line at all with some cars coming to a complete & abrupt stop on each attempted lap around the aforementioned area.
This all led to some friendly banter from the track owner involving some “deep guide” comments and resulted in the Track Owner performing some last minute surgery on the recalcitrant areas of lane 4 to remove the chunks of glue that had somehow become lodged in the bottom of the slot, thus causing most of the problems.
The next slight issue was with the equipment used to “clear” these chunks of glue & mdf from the slot. The handheld vac certainly picked up the glue & mdf most efficiently, however the expelling of a fine layer of sawdust all over the track from the rear of the vacuum cleaner was NOT ideal & led to a complete re-clean of the track & the re-rubbering of all lanes via some intensive work from drivers before (& during) racing.
ANYWay, as the Grand-Am cars were 2nd series run for the night, there would be no further issues on this front would there ?
For the most part, no, everything went reasonably smoothly & it was the local track knowledge & a smooth handling car that worked the magic for Bruce Thomas this week with this total of 107 laps good enough to take the win. However, there was a slight glitch for Bruce as in a reminder of earlier troubles, his car did actually take some prompting at one stage to get past one certain section of the track (slot). Dave Schofield was seen soon after in a corner trying very hard to stifle his mirth.
Phil Kalbfell fell to 2nd this week & was 2 laps down on Bruce with this total of 105 laps, which was another 2 laps clear of the writers car in 3rd on 103 laps for the night.
A tight battle for 4th again featured John Batich tied with another driver, this time Schoee. Unluckily for JB he missed out once again on track position & it was Schoee who finished 4th ahead of JB in 5th both on 96 laps. 1 lap further back & in 6th, on 95 laps, was Adrian Gray who found out quite quickly that 1 de-slot off the edge of the track instantly reduced your tyre grip to Zero. Something that all drivers attempted to avoid at all cost from then on, but with differing levels of success. That some even resorted to coming in for a quick mid-race pitstop for tyre cleaning says something about how much the grip was affected by any excursion.
In 7th, DB racked up 93 laps, 4 laps ahead of Dave Gray in a good 8th on 89, and Rhys in 9th on 87 laps. Scott struggled with grip signifagantly towards the end of all of his heats & ended up 10th on 82 laps.
Thomas Males finished 11th on 67, and had his lap count reduced by major mechanical problems on lane 2, which saw him only notch up 2 laps. Which was a huge shame as his car seemed very well sorted this week, and during his 25 lap stint on lane 3 looked at times as though it was running on rails…….or magnets.
Round 5 - Stratton Valley - 4/7/23
1st - Callan Thomas
2nd - Phil Kalbfell
3rd - Bruce Thomas
1st - Callan Thomas
2nd - Phil Kalbfell
3rd - Bruce Thomas
Round 5 - Report
In an unprecedented turn of events, in round 5 of the Grand-Am series, all 3 cars in the top 3 this week had all body parts still attached at the end of racing! (See photos above).
Perhaps this was a sign of the better standard of racing at Stratton Valley, but whatever the case it certainly was welcomed by the marshalls. As it turned out, there was some very good close racing this week and many places were separated by not many laps as we will see in the results.
Callan Thomas made a triumphant return after his absence to take the win on 85 laps, but only just. Phil Kalbfell was quick as usual & also notched up 85 laps, but it was the matter of a single corner than pushed him back to 2nd. The battle for third was even more exceptional. 3 cars tied on 81 laps, and it was Bruce Thomas who took 3rd place on track position from Dave Bantoft & John Batich in 4th & 5th. JB must have felt particularly aggrieved…from possible 3rd down to 5th in the space of less than 1 lap.
Rhys stood alone in 6th with his total of 79 laps, ahead of yet another two drivers locked together. Both Adrian Gray & myself finished on 78 laps, but this week it was the writer who grabbed 7th ahead of Adrian in 8th.
Scott Wyman locked up a good top 10 finish with 8th on 74 laps, ahead of another two drivers sharing a lap total. Dave Gray grabbed 9th from Dave Schofield (10th) with their shared 73 laps.
Thomas Males rounded out the field this week in 11th on 62 laps for the evening.
In an unprecedented turn of events, in round 5 of the Grand-Am series, all 3 cars in the top 3 this week had all body parts still attached at the end of racing! (See photos above).
Perhaps this was a sign of the better standard of racing at Stratton Valley, but whatever the case it certainly was welcomed by the marshalls. As it turned out, there was some very good close racing this week and many places were separated by not many laps as we will see in the results.
Callan Thomas made a triumphant return after his absence to take the win on 85 laps, but only just. Phil Kalbfell was quick as usual & also notched up 85 laps, but it was the matter of a single corner than pushed him back to 2nd. The battle for third was even more exceptional. 3 cars tied on 81 laps, and it was Bruce Thomas who took 3rd place on track position from Dave Bantoft & John Batich in 4th & 5th. JB must have felt particularly aggrieved…from possible 3rd down to 5th in the space of less than 1 lap.
Rhys stood alone in 6th with his total of 79 laps, ahead of yet another two drivers locked together. Both Adrian Gray & myself finished on 78 laps, but this week it was the writer who grabbed 7th ahead of Adrian in 8th.
Scott Wyman locked up a good top 10 finish with 8th on 74 laps, ahead of another two drivers sharing a lap total. Dave Gray grabbed 9th from Dave Schofield (10th) with their shared 73 laps.
Thomas Males rounded out the field this week in 11th on 62 laps for the evening.
Round 6 - Report
Round 6 - Mornington Park - 18/7/23
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Callan Thomas
3rd - Bruce Thomas
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Callan Thomas
3rd - Bruce Thomas
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Race 6 Report
Well the penultimate round of this series.This proved to be a fairly uneventful race compared to some previous rounds.
Callan and I produced some close lap score BUT he had a bad run on yellow even though he had a very fast lap time. With out this he would have been a lot closer to me.
Bruce and Rob finished on the same laps with Bruce ahead. Rhys was only a lap behind with some consistant driving.
JB was 7th 2 laps ahead of Dave Bantoft..
Dave Gray was the last of the runners.
Scott showed promise in his first heat, But an off in heat two into the wall may have been his undoing and apart from the slow marshal his repaired chassis broke again and he had to retire.
Lucky only one round to go this year.
Well the penultimate round of this series.This proved to be a fairly uneventful race compared to some previous rounds.
Callan and I produced some close lap score BUT he had a bad run on yellow even though he had a very fast lap time. With out this he would have been a lot closer to me.
Bruce and Rob finished on the same laps with Bruce ahead. Rhys was only a lap behind with some consistant driving.
JB was 7th 2 laps ahead of Dave Bantoft..
Dave Gray was the last of the runners.
Scott showed promise in his first heat, But an off in heat two into the wall may have been his undoing and apart from the slow marshal his repaired chassis broke again and he had to retire.
Lucky only one round to go this year.
Round 7 - Stratton Valley - 1/8/23
1st - Callan Thomas
2nd - Phil Kalbfell
3rd - Bruce Thomas
1st - Callan Thomas
2nd - Phil Kalbfell
3rd - Bruce Thomas
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Race 7 Report
This week saw the last race of the Grand Am/ Daytona prototype series, I know many will be dissapointed that the series has finished.
These cars always provide some interesting racing with the unpredicability of the handling.
Callan managed to just finish about 1 metre ahead of me after I had a bad first bracket.
I think Bruce may have stopped for a Kit Kat as he was 5 laps behind in third.
The net four places were one lap between each in order Rob,John,Rhys and Dave Bantoft.
Dave Gray headed Scotts Repaired car with Thomas the last of the runners as Adrian DNF.
Dave Bantofts poor placing appeared to allow John to move up to third in the series BUT once the final points were calculated the Series results were Phil, Bruce and Dave Bantoft in third froM John.
This week saw the last race of the Grand Am/ Daytona prototype series, I know many will be dissapointed that the series has finished.
These cars always provide some interesting racing with the unpredicability of the handling.
Callan managed to just finish about 1 metre ahead of me after I had a bad first bracket.
I think Bruce may have stopped for a Kit Kat as he was 5 laps behind in third.
The net four places were one lap between each in order Rob,John,Rhys and Dave Bantoft.
Dave Gray headed Scotts Repaired car with Thomas the last of the runners as Adrian DNF.
Dave Bantofts poor placing appeared to allow John to move up to third in the series BUT once the final points were calculated the Series results were Phil, Bruce and Dave Bantoft in third froM John.
Series Results
Final Series Results
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Bruce thomas
3rd - Dave Bantoft
Dave Bantofts poor placing in the final race appeared to allow John to move up to third in the series BUT once the final points were calculated the Series results were Phil, Bruce and Dave Bantoft in third from John.
Dave never managed a podium during the series BUT did manage 3 4th places.
1st - Phil Kalbfell
2nd - Bruce thomas
3rd - Dave Bantoft
Dave Bantofts poor placing in the final race appeared to allow John to move up to third in the series BUT once the final points were calculated the Series results were Phil, Bruce and Dave Bantoft in third from John.
Dave never managed a podium during the series BUT did manage 3 4th places.
