Mowlem's musings

The Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona was one of the most exhausting races of my life, due to the tricky weather conditions, but it was worth it - the result could not have been better unless we'd won it overall! We finished first in the GT class and second overall, and it was pretty exciting to have such a close finish after 24 hours.

They red-flagged the race for something like three hours because of the rain. Before that, I was just cruising at 30mph behind the safety car. Needless to say it was pretty boring. I actually nodded off on the banking in the middle of the night! They were using one of those track blowers to clean the circuit and that's what woke me up. But it was exactly like when you catch yourself sleeping on the motorway late at night.

We had plenty of other problems. Later on, the rear window collapsed and after the patch-up job it was like having a parachute coming out of the back of the car. It was also pretty exciting in the wet if you hit a white line, or tried to shift gear on one. And then, visibility was very bad as well. We had the windscreen fogging up and water on the inside, all that stuff.

The end was quite exciting, because we ended up getting caught out on slick tyres when it rained. But we didn't want to pit and lose our advantage over Mike Rockenfeller's Flying Lizard Porsche. He was charging and throwing caution to the wind, but we managed to stabilise the gap. But then I lost 15 seconds in one lap when I overtook someone under yellow and had to wave them past again. There were only six seconds in it at the end, after 24 hours of racing!

So at last I've got my Rolex watch, for winning my class at Daytona. And it's a bonus that we were second overall. It's always nice to be able to say you've won your class at one of the major internationals. Now I just need to win my class at Le Mans!

I'd say this ranks up there with one of my best wins, and it's a fine way to start the season. I have to say I feel a bit sorry for Andy Wallace though, who lost out on the overall win with just 20 minutes to go. And that's in spite of the fact that he's been the one showing off his Rolex for the past year...