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Daytona Speedway, Florida, USA Under sunny skies and a clear but crisp night in front of a record Rolex 24 crowd of about 70,000 spectators, Crilly drove the race in Boca Raton, Florida based Team Protosport's Porsche 911 with Primary driver sponsorship from West Palm Beach, Florida based Savasort, Inc., the leading manufacturer of loose sheet document sorting equipment, and Associate support from Camden, New Jersey based Campbell's Soup Company; Calgary, Canada based NovAtel Ltd., who make GPS (Global Positioning Systems); and Lancaster, UK based Forsberg Services Ltd., who use NovAtel's GPS systems in various products, including racing data acquisition systems. The team garnered ESPN and ESPN2 coverage amongst the 12 hours of live television coverage the race received this year, and a recap show will also be aired. A poor qualifying (due to a faulty wiring harness) saw the team starting a lowly 67th of 79 entrants (and 24th out 27 in class). Moving quickly through the field however, Crilly and co-drivers Paul Arnold, Mark Hillestead, Dave Russell, Jr., and Bill Stitt, collectively hauled the car up 40 spots to run as high as 27th overall, 7th in class by about 3:30 a.m. before the fatal flywheel problem halted the team.
The biggest problem of the race seemed to be driving safely through the traffic generated by the huge field running at 180+ mph on the banking. Crilly, driving in the darkness, witnessed numerous Can-Am (the fastest class) incidents a little too close up: "After the Scandia Ferrari 333SP (Papis, Evans, Dalmas, Wollek, Fellows) lost a wheel going into the chicane, another Can-Am car spun directly in front of me on the pace car lap. Amazing, but the cool night air wouldn't allow any heat to remain in the tires when everyone slowed down for a caution."
The next race for Crilly will be in the Radical 1100 sports racer on March 21 at Silverstone in the UK, under Team Savasort and Carbotech (a brake pad manufacturer) sponsorship. |
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Sponsored by: Savasort Inc. Improving Business Efficiency Since 1929 For more information about Sabre Motorsports and TEAM Savasort: |
After running in the top ten for a portion of the race, Munich based Canadian driver Neil Crilly finished 46th overall out of 74 starters (and 14th out of 27 in the GT-3 class) in the #52 Team Savasort Porsche 911 at the 1/31-2/1 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona. A certain top ten finish was ruined for the team due to unrepairable crankshaft damage caused by sheared flywheel bolts occurring as the team ran 9th in hour 15 of the race.
