The Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona is a long and arduous race that takes a team of drivers to get the job done and Jeff Gordon, after retiring from NASCAR, has agreed to be part of the Cadillac team. Thankfully this race is being held at a location that Gordon is intimately familiar with and has raced at many time in his NASCAR career. This four-time Cup Series champion will try his hand at a new type of car and a new type of race that will test him once again and give him a fresh excitement for racing.
The Cadillac that Gordon will race in is owned by Konica Minolta and will wear the number ten on the side. This car is brand new and is a Cadillac DPi-V.R. His racing mates will be Ricky and Jordan Taylor and Max Angelelli. Although he doesn’t have a lot of experience under his belt at this type of racing, Gordon has raced in this particular race in the past in 2007 when he raced along Angelelli, Jan Magnussen and Wane Taylor who was the team owner and a three-time champion at the time. This was a race in which this team won and it certainly gave Jeff the taste for this type of racing to be ready to try it once again.
This number 10 Konica Minolta team has been a podium regular as it finished second in 2013, 2014 and 2016 while also making it to third in 2015 even though they were penalized and taken from among the podium finishers in that year. Adding Jeff Gordon to the team is a way for this team to hopefully make it to the top of the podium and come in first, especially at a track that he’s so familiar with and has won at during the NASCAR circuit.
This amazing race car that’s built to handle the rigors of this track and the long race that it will be asked to endure is something special. This car uses a race prepped naturally aspirated Cadillac 6.2-liter V8 engine that allows the car to make nearly 600 horsepower which is pushed directly to the rear wheels. The transmission is an X-TRAC paddle-shift transmission and other than the terms that tell you this powertrain is racing tuned, it doesn’t sound like much more than what you might find under the hood of a Cadillac CTS-V.
Since leaving the NASCAR circuit, Jeff Gordon has been in the tower announcing races for NASCAR in hopes he would have the opportunity to race in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona again and now he has his chance. The team that’s been assembled is one Gordon believes could win the race and have a great time in the process. As they prepare for this race that will take place in a few short months the team is preparing the way they need to in order to make this Cadillac racing machine fly around the track.
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