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Patrick's Daytona debut marred by bad weather (cont'd)
Just before 10:30 a.m., the heavily overcast sky brightened and the track's four jet dryers, two on loan from Homestead-Miami Speedway, were deployed to begin track drying. Cars took to the speedway but only ran about 22 minutes before a rain squall wet the course.
Speedway president Robin Braig said that ARCA elected to keep the test sessions within the approximate time of their event, which is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m., so they declined to test under the lights Friday.
"We lost the track [got too wet] on that last shower and it would have taken two hours, at least, to dry it," Braig said of the scheduled 5 p.m. shutdown time. "We'll open the garage at 7 a.m. [Saturday] and be back on track at 9 [provided the track is dry]."
ARCA mandated Friday's testing would be single-car runs only. Saturday should be split between single-car runs and, later, drafting practice, if teams choose to do it.
"It's really disappointing to lose this day, because we were hoping to get in three full days at this test," JR Motorsports' competition director Tony Eury Sr. said. "We're going to concentrate on single-car runs and let her get comfortable in the car before we put her around anyone else."
Eury said he'd set no target speed for this test.
"We've got to make the car run as fast as we can make it run," Eury said. "So we've got a lot of different pieces to try. We haven't run one of these [ARCA] cars in a while, so we've got some pieces made up to try to try to make it a little better. But we're definitely going to ease into the drafting part of [the test]."
Patrick arrived at the track right at 8 a.m. -- in time for an ARCA drivers' meeting -- when some of the late-arriving haulers were still parking. According to Eury she took advantage of the wet conditions to continue the breaking-in process with the crew that began at a two-day test last weekend at Walt Disney World Speedway.
JR Motorsports' Nationwide Series driver Kelly Bires made only a few laps there to set up its two cars before rain began falling, wiping out the rest of the day. In more than four hours of running the second day, Patrick only got out of the car once, Eury said, which impressed him.
The team, which had two cars at Daytona solely for Patrick's use, was confident enough in her progress that Bires was left in North Carolina, Eury said.
After she left the drivers' meeting, Patrick and Eury Jr. took several laps around the speedway with ARCA official Terry Kibbler, part of the sanctioning body's safety team.
"I got more from the ride around the track in the van than I did in the sports car," Patrick said. "Because you don't get any perspective on the whole track, and you get no rhythm for that because you're driving a road course, basically. It was nice for me to ride around in the van and get reference points."
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