In just a few short weeks, the racing season will be back in full swing with the 44th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona. For the 25th time in 27 years, I will be there with my father just like each year before with cameras packed, extra film and video tapes at the ready with enough clothes to last at least us a week. For us and so many other sports car racing fans in North America, there is no other place that we would rather be. The anticipation of what’s to come rivals that of a 6 year old on Christmas morning before they tear into that first perfectly wrapped present from Santa.

It is near impossible to explain the feelings and emotions I get from being at the Rolex 24 to someone who’s never been there before. From the first time I ever saw a Porsche 935 fly by me at near 200 mph, there is nothing else I’ve wanted to be a part of more. The sights and sounds I experienced during that first race at Daytona in 1981 with my parents are as strong today as they were the day they happened.

Photo by Derek Meluzio

Photo by Derek Meluzio

I have been lucky enough to see many of the changes sports car racing has gone through over the last quarter century, both good and bad. Like many, I used to think of the GTP cars as the ‘Golden Era’ of sports car racing. They were sleek and beautiful and powerful and capable of amazing speeds and performance. They were everything I thought a racing car should be. But like so many things from the past, we often tend to romanticize them as being better than they really were.

For years, I have been taping sports car races and from time to time, I like to sit down and watch them again. More often than not, what I see does not coincide with the memories I had. The cars were always just as fast and impressive as I remembered, but the lack of competition always seems to leave me wanting more. Too many times the margin of victory was measured in minutes or laps and the winner had been determined long before the checkered flag ever fell.

That had become all to common of an occurrence until the Grand American Road Racing Association came up with a new direction for sports car racing in North America. Thanks to many of the same people that helped make the IMSA GTP series so memorable and the addition of a few key new people like Roger Edmondson, the Grand American Road Racing Associations DP and GT classes are well on their way to becoming the next ‘Golden Era’ of professional sports car racing. Gone is the reliance of major manufacturer participation and the ridiculous price tag so often associated with merely putting a car on the starting grid. In its place is possibly the most competitive and exciting road racing series since the glory days of the original Trans-Am. Constantly we are provided with races going down to the checkered flag with wins being measured in tenths of a second. The accurate prediction of potential race winners can no longer be determined by the simple flip of a coin as they had been before, and I wouldn’t want to see it any other way.

Photo by Mark Windecker

Photo by Mark Windecker

Just as I have done in the past, I will be taping the Rolex 24 so that when I get back home from my weekend at the track, I can sit down and watch all the stories unfold once again. I look forward to the day when my son is old enough to understand racing and hopefully, it has the same impact on him as it has me. Then we can watch these old racing tapes together and I can share with him the start of the new Golden Era of sports car racing, just like my dad did with me 27 years ago. Until then, as we continue to get closer and closer to this years Rolex 24, I will get more and more excited with each passing day, just like I did when I was 6 and waiting for Santa to bring that one special gift that I had spent the whole year hoping for.

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