I will remember the 2014 race for a long time because Porsche won its class against the new Corvettes, Ferraris, Aston Martin, BMWs, and Vipers.
Patrick Long and his 5 team-mates of factory drivers in the two new Porsches with numbers of 911 and 912 did an outstanding job. # 911 finished first and #912 retired part way thru the race. I guess that is why it makes plenty of sense to enter two cars.
Our long time Suncoast member Dr. Jim Norman raced the #71 car in a different class than the factory team. Jim lives and works in Tampa, but he has fun all over the country racing Porsches. You may recall that in the number 38 Cayman, he won his class in the Continental series for 2013. When the two groups became the United Sports Car series, the class was eliminated so Jim moved up to drive the Park Place prepared car. Jim is a great supporter of the Kart 4 Kids event.
Lee and I worked a shift in the Porsche Corral tent along with El- eanor and Tom Bobbitt, Chris and Dennis Krutzler, and Paul Bienick, our new webmaster. We met a lot of nice people from all over the world. Patrick came into the tent with his team, introduced them and each gave a bit of their personal background. It was fun to have a Porsche factory team represented at Daytona and we really enjoyed having them in the tent before the race and having the opportunity to get to know a little about all of them.
Jim drove the #71 car at the 48 Hours at Sebring and couldn’t be in any class there as the car was too powerful so Jim drove it in the exhibi- tion class. Patrick Long was also there driving a friends 1990 #17 purple air-cooled cup car. It was his weekend off! I understand he tried to purchase #17 and the owner would not sell her.