Donkey Bop Racing Floods The Zone At The 2021 24 Hours of Daytona With a Top 5 And Two Top 10 Finishes
The 24 Hours of Daytona is the most famous endurance race held in the United States. The very first race was held in 1966, and was featured in the hit movie Ford v. Ferrari. Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby won that race in a Ford Mark II.
A little known fact from that race is that it included two all-female driver teams, including one with Janet Guthrie, Suzy Dietrich, and Donna Mae Mims.
The iRacing 2021 edition of this race was notable for how tough the racing was. Teams in every split were well prepared, and the carnage level was fairly low.
All four Donkey Bop entries ran the Dallara P217 Le Mans Prototype 2 in this race.
The Donkey Bop #001 car, with an international team of top Donkey Bop drivers Carlos Plaza (US), Stephen Jones (GB), Daniele Noventa (ITA), and Jim Ray (US) had a top 5 finish in a very tough race (Strength of Field 2181). Plaza, led the way (as always) with a fastest lap of 1:33.691 and 1:37.360. Quite amazingly, all four drivers were within .5 seconds of each other on the fastest lap, and .8 seconds of each other on the average lap time. Daniele Noventa led the way on clean driving with 11 incident points over 261 laps (a rate of .0421 incidents per lap). This team was also pretty remarkable as they ran a number of “quad” stints – that is four stints back to back for a single driver.
The Donkey Bop #002 car was driven by JF Godin (CAN), Jordan McGregor (US), Matthew Maseko (CAN), Cody Bahr (US), and John Hall (UK). They finished in P10 in a strong field with a SOF of 1739. McGregor was on fire in this race, setting the pace with the fastest lap of 1:34.186, and the fastest average lap of 1:37.976. And all five drivers had fastest laps in the 1:34s. Bahr won the clean driver award on this team with 14 incident points over 162 laps (a rate of .0864 incidents per lap).
The Donkey Bop #003 car had a very good 12th place finish in a race with an SOF of 1650. The driver lineup was all American with Milt Minter Jr (US), Larry Krupp (US), Jerry Foehrkolb, Guy Pitra (US), Ken Soszka (US) and Danny Falcon (US). Foehrkolb was the fastest with a blazing lap of 1:34.599. Larry Krupp had the fastest average lap time at 1:38.372. Danny Falcon took the clean driver award for this car and all of Donkey Bop with only 4 incident points over 140 laps (a rate of .0285 incidents per lap).
The Donkey Bop #008 car, affectionately known as “the Ocho,” had a great finish with a team of newer Donkey Bop drivers, including Chris Phillips (US), Hal Kemrite (US), Kris Thompson (US), Chet Barkin (US), Matt Moritz (US), and Andrew Kavanaugh (GB). It should be noted right up front that Moritz and Kavanaugh both drove very strong races in their return to road racing after a long absence away. It was great to see these two drivers back at it driving solid races with Donkey Bop! The Ocho had a nice P10 finish in a race with a strength of field of 1339. Phillips led the way with a fastest lap of 1:34.784, and the fastest average lap time of 1:38.627. Hal Kemrite won the clean race trophy with 13 incident points over 134 laps (a rate of .0970 incidents per lap).
– Kris Thompson