Pre-race pageantry quickly gives way to typical give-and-take on the track.
DAYTONA BEACH — The Captain, Roger Penske, climbed atop a Rolex 24 pit box for the first time in nine years. Scott Pruett, after some 50 years of racing and 31 Rolex starts, wore his uniform to the grid for the last time.
They appeared to be joined by half of the Western Hemisphere and a healthy swath of the Eastern.
“I feel like I’m at a very crowded UN meeting,” said Eddie Cheever, former international racer, Indy 500 champ and interested onlooker — his son, Eddie III, drives in the Prototype class. “People from all over the world are here. It’s tremendous.”
Just when you think it can’t any busier from one year to the next, they’re stacked up, hundreds deep, to enter the gates to the pre-race starting grid.
“I don’t know if there are more people here than last year,” said team owner Bob Johnson, “but obviously everything seems to be getting bigger and better and growing like crazy. It’s great. Absolutely great.”
You don’t get attendance figures from Daytona International Speedway — official, unofficial or even a roundabout ballpark.
The 40,000 estimate provided by the News-Journal is certainly more of an inexact science than during big NASCAR events here, because the Rolex is by and large an infield event (roughly 5-10,000 fans were in the grandstands during Saturday’s early hours). The mix of cars, RVs, onlookers and partying wanderers makes for an educated guess, at best.
This isn’t a guess: By race’s start, the infield was closed to additional vehicles. On top of that, the 1,100 camping spots available outside the west side of the track had been sold out for two days.
And everyone, it seemed, was on or around the starting grid in the hour before the green flag.
“Very crowded. Was difficult to breathe,” said Fernando Alonso, the two-time Formula One champ and major international racing star who has seen some crowds in his day.
Before the Rolex, just as before the Daytona 500, as the eventual command to start engines quickly approaches, there’s always the same mild fear: “They’ll never get this place cleared out in time for the start.”
But they always do, and Saturday, what followed the green flag’s unfurling was basically what everyone had promised. With 20 sleek prototypes leading the way, there was no sense that any driver was pacing himself for the marathon.
“Oh yeah, as soon as the race started, it was typical, competitive nature. You just want to stay up front,” said Helio Castroneves, the longtime IndyCar star now part of IMSA’s sports-car world. “Yes, some close calls. Kinda fun. But you realize it could become ugly in the end. That’s the point you say, ‘you know what, you gotta let it go.’ ”
No one enjoyed the earliest moments more than Renger Van Der Zande, the Netherlands native who started on the pole and led the 50-car field in the dive off the tri-oval into the first turn of the infield road course.
“It’s beautiful, you know,” said Van Der Zande. “You decide the pace, you decide where you brake in Turn 1. Off you go.”
Though it was mostly cloudy Saturday morning and early afternoon, there was no rain in the forecast. About an hour before the 2:40 start, however, a light misting briefly had everyone looking skyward and marking this as a loss for the forecasters.
It left as fast as it came, but may have served as a warning, since rain looks quite likely — or at least possible — in Sunday’s early afternoon. The closing hour or two may be run on rain tires, which obviously kills the average speed, but ramps up the drama.
“We’re planning for it, pretty much,” said Johnson, whose No. 10 Cadillac was among the leaders in the early hours. “We’re not afraid of the rain. I’d prefer it didn’t rain, but we’re good for that.”
Others might not necessarily shrug off the rain possibility, but instead look to it as an equalizer of sorts. Alonso’s No. 23 Ligier prototype, for instance, has been slower than the faster prototypes all month — in early January’s three-day test and through the first two-plus days of Rolex weekend.
“If you’re overconfident and push the car, that’s where you make mistakes,” he said of navigating a wet track. “We know we need some other factors to be competitive, and maybe the rain can be that other factor.”