Audi Driver Frank Stippler Narrates A Lap Of Daytona: Video

The Audi R8 pace car
The Audi R8 pace car

The Audi R8 pace car

If you think of Daytona only as a NASCAR tri-oval, think again. Its infield road course, as used for this weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, presents drivers with different challenges than they’d face on the track’s high banks alone. Infield corners aren’t banked, so finding the traction needed for braking and acceleration can be a challenge. Get off-line to the outside, and the accumulated debris all but guarantees a spin.

The infield horseshoe corners do make for great fan viewing, but our advice is to get there early to stake out a seat. There’s plenty of passing in the International Horseshoe (the first of two seen on the video), so that’s really where you want to camp out.

It wouldn’t be Daytona without the track’s legendarily-steep banking, so the road course still uses all of the track’s oval-configuration corners. The back straight gets a chicane (the legendary “Bus Stop”) to slow speeds as the cars enter the turn three banking (which is turn 12 on the road course).

While Stippler’s lap may seem leisurely, we assure you that it’s anything but. It may not be at a full-on race velocity, but the quattro GmbH driver isn’t piloting a race car – he’s driving the Audi R8 Pace car.