Wayne Taylor Racing won the 24 Hours of Daytona for the second consecutive year with Kamui Kobayashi and Renger van der Zande becoming the 11th and 12th drivers to win this race consecutive times, Scott Dixon becoming the 15th driver to win the race three times and Ryan Briscoe got his first overall victory. DragonSpeed won in LMP2 for the second consecutive year with Ben Hanley, Colin Braun, Harrison Newey and Henrik Hedman. BMW Team RLL won in GTLM for the second consecutive year but this time it was with the #24 BMW of John Edwards, Jesse Krohn, Chaz Mostert and Augusto Farfus, who was on the victorious team in 2019. Paul Miller Racing made it three consecutive GTD class victories for Lamborghini at Daytona with Bryan Sellers, Madison Snow, Corey Lewis and Andrea Caldarelli. My mind was firmly on Daytona and here is a run down of what got me thinking.
Lack of Ceremony
Timo Bernhard retired and it wasn't really mentioned.
There were a lot of top drivers in sports cars that were not at Daytona this year, not all of them retired, but Bernhard is the one that stood out to me because we are not going to see him again. Everything is going to go on. Drivers retire and this was just another case of a driver calling it a career but I feel this exit deserves more recognition.
Bernhard won the 2003 24 Hours of Daytona, he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice, one of 39 drivers with multiple victories in that event, he won the 24 Hours Nürburgring five times, tied for the all-time record with Pedro Lamy and Marcel Tiemann, he famously won the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring in the Team Penske Porsche RS Spyder with Romain Dumas and Emmanuel Collard against the mighty LMP1 machines from Audi and Peugeot and he was twice world champion.
No one is calling Bernhard the greatest sports car driver of all-time and that is understandable but his retirement has come with little fanfare. That does not sit right for one of the best sports car drivers for the 21st century.
Bernhard made his name in the Porsche system, starting in the GT program, worked his way into the Porsche RS Spyder program with Team Penske and won two championships while beating the Audi LMP1 program many times in the process and then he became a top LMP1 drivers, winning Le Mans with Audi and Porsche.
In the last 20 years there are not many other sports car careers that match Bernhard's and it is over. No farewell. No congratulations. Nothing. That is kind of how sports car racing seems to be.
Careers end. It might be the nature of sports car racing. Drivers can go on for close to 40 years in some cases and a driver can spend the final ten or 15 years of a career in the lowest class in a sports car series and go under the radar. In that case a driver's career isn't over but it is not getting the same level of attention because that driver is no longer competing for the overall victories. It is still possible to get victories and championships but it is not top billing.
Sports car racing does not have nature of NASCAR and not even IndyCar to have a living wake for its drivers. Paul Menard and David Ragan, two drivers with a combined three victories in a combined 941 Cup Series starts, both got send offs at Homestead last year when both announced their retirements (though Ragan will be running the Daytona 500 this year).
The retirement tour full of gifts does get tiring and is mostly unnecessary but in this case I am not talking about ridiculous displays but just a simple goodbye, an acknowledgment of what a driver has done and appreciating what that driver meant.
I am not mad about it and I am not saying IMSA, the FIA World Endurance Championship and European Le Mans Series are doing something wrong. Bernhard's retirement came kind of quickly and was mostly an Irish goodbye. He got his time with Mazda as an endurance race driver and was running his ADAC GT Masters team and time simply ran out on his career. It happens. I think Christian Fittipaldi's retirement had somewhat of the same ending last year. The only difference is Fittipaldi got to run Daytona as his final race and he got a chance to be celebrated.
I think I feel this way because of how things were different this year at Daytona. Joey Hand, Dirk Müller, Richard Westbrook, Romain Dumas, Jörg Bergmeister, Nissan, CORE Autosport, Montaplast by Land-Motorsport and Chip Ganassi Racing were not at Daytona this year. Those drivers have been a big part of the American sports car landscape for the last 15 years and it is odd they were not there. It felt wrong that Hand, Müller, Westbrook and Dumas did not get rides and it is odd that Bergmeister is done with racing. Bergmeister and Bernhard are in the same boat. Both were top drivers in the United States in the 2000s with the only difference between the two careers being Bernhard going on to great international success in prototypes while Bergmeister's career was primarily in GT racing.
Another part of it is, in IndyCar, Sébastien Bourdais was bounced without any inclination he was in trouble. We are on the verge of Tony Kanaan's 317-consecutive-start streak ending but not because Kanaan is calling it time but because he will still be standing when the music has stopped. James Hinchcliffe's career merry-go-round has stopped with him only able to pick up cameo roles but not because that is what he wants his career to be.
There is always going to be a rotation of drivers in any series. It is natural and necessary. You do not want a series that has the same 20 drivers every year because it shows there is a lack of interest in that series but at the same time you do not want a series that has 20 different drivers every year because that shows a lack of stability. The revolving door has to keep moving and heading into 2020 it was more active than in recent memory with some regulars being funneled out unexpectedly. Everything will be fine. These years of increased activity happen from time to time. The next few years could be rather tame.
It is always going to be tough in sports car racing to give the drivers their due. This weekend at Daytona there were 143 drivers competing and this was a down year in terms of entrants. You try giving each driver the proper sendoff. This is not a series with 40 drivers and it is the same drivers every week and for the most part about 60% of grid is the same as it was a decade ago. It isn't a series with two-dozen drivers and it is easy to know all of them. There are a lot of moving pieces and some are going to be cast under a shadow and missed.
For a few names though, we must keep an eye on them for their success puts them ahead of most in the flock. This year should remind us to appreciate who we have while they are here. We must take some time to acknowledge the veterans every now and then. Otherwise we will fine ourselves wondering where these wonderful faces have gone.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about the 24 Hours of Daytona but did you know....
Thierry Neuville won Rallye Monte-Carlo after winning the final six stages and entering the final day third in the overall standings.
Ken Roczen won Supercross race in Glendale, Arizona, his second consecutive victory as he swept all three Triple Crown races.
Caio Collet, Émilien Denner and Liam Lawson split the Toyota Racing Series races from Teretonga Park.
Coming Up This Weekend
The Bathurst 12 Hour.
Supercross will be in Oakland.
Toyota Racing Series heads to Hampton Downs.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
