With a newly installed Bosch ECU and some other updated components, we went into the first race of the 2011 Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge with high-hopes for success and more laps led at Daytona International Speedway. Our weekend started extremely well, and all of the new components worked exactly as we wanted. After two great practice sessions and some minor modifications to our updates, AJ Riley (@ajriley) got in the car to qualify in the afternoon. Unfortunately AJ had a minor fire inside the car when he had just started his flying lap and was forced to abandon his qualifying effort. The fire was quickly extinguished, and no one, including the car, was hurt.

AJ started the race in 26th place out of 41 ST class cars, and quickly made progress to get us into the top 20. After about an hour and 10 minutes of great driving, AJ had gotten the DRIVEN Clothing Company Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 up into 10th place, and brought the car in for fuel and a driver change. His brother, Jameson Riley (@jamesonriley), got into the car and with quick and great work by the Riley Racing crew and was back on track in 10th place. With some GS class traffic and a lot of race left, Jameson maintained a consistent pace, ready to take advantage of any mistakes or opportunities with the cars in front.

With our fuel strategy, we were hoping for a full-course yellow, so that we could come in a top-off our fuel and reduce the amount of spots we would lose on track. We got the full-course yellow…but it was for our car. Race done. We had a mechanical failure that required Jameson to park the car on-track.

Look for the DRIVEN Clothing Company Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge.

The weekend started with a brake issue: no ABS. The ABS system in our car controls the power braking, and without it, we have far too much braking, resulting in easy lock-up. The problem was quickly fixed, and we were up to speed immediately.

With only one practice session left before qualifying, Jameson set out for his first time driving at Daytona International Speedway’s infield course, trying to learn the track and find setup changes that would need to be made for qualifying later that afternoon. AJ got some seat time as well at the end of the second practice session.

Qualifying went well, with Jameson setting the 5th fastest time for the ST class in our Mazda RX-8. We encountered some fuel issues during qualifying, which prevented us from going any faster, but we were happy with our qualifying time for our first time at Daytona.

Friday morning practice went even better, as we made some vital setup changes, and Jameson went fastest for the session with a 2:09.9 lap time, which would be our fastest time for the weekend. AJ started the session to get much needed track time and was able to get some good laps in before the race.

Jameson started the race, and quickly got to the front of the field, leading 23 laps of the 66 lap event, second most laps led only to the eventual winner. Because of our reoccurring fuel issues, Jameson had to pit for a second fuel stop, while other teams only required one stop. This put us out of contention for the win, or even a podium. Unfortunately, our race ended with a rookie driver spinning AJ on the last lap, resulting in a different car hitting AJ and damaging our car.

Although the race ended with a crash, we still made great progress throughout the weekend, and led many laps. It was a great effort from the entire Riley Racing crew and drivers, and we look forward to the next event.