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Memories of the year: Fun at the Daytona 24 Hours

In the latest of our Memories of 2011 series, Charles Bradley casts his mind back to the Daytona 24 Hours in January and to an all-new experience at a venue familiar to him

Apart from the Dakar and Monte Carlo rallies, and AUTOSPORT International of course, there's not much to see or do in January - unless you make the pilgrimage to Daytona for the Grand-Am opener, its showpiece 24 Hours.

I'd been to Daytona for both the 500 and the July NASCAR night race plenty of times, but this was my first 24 - so I didn't know what to expect. I figured my boredom threshold would be breached at some point during the 24 hours. How wrong I was.

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Author Charles Bradley

Charles Bradley is Chief Editor of Autosport US. After spending five years in the aerospace industry in his native North Wales, while working weekends as a freelance writer at racetracks around the UK, Charles joined the staff of Motoring News in the heart of London. He transferred to the nascent Autosport.com team in 2000 before transitioning to the magazine, becoming its Editor between 2011 and 2014. Charles then upped sticks to work in America, as Motorsport.com’s Editor in Chief, where he created the multi-national and multi-lingual editorial team that quickly became the world’s most-read motorsport website. He was instrumental in delivering three of the biggest Global F1 Fan Surveys in sports history and is also a multiple award-winning scriptwriter. Charles is an overseas member of the Guild of Motoring Writers and lives in Miami Beach with his wife Helen – and a cat that’s named after Serbia’s top football club.