Weather forecast for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona

[slorydn1]

Thursday Sunny, with a high near 72. West wind 5 to 15 mph. Thursday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 50. North wind around 5 mph.
Friday A 20 percent chance of showers. Mostly sunny, with a high near 72. North northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming east in the afternoon.
Friday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 52. South southwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Saturday Mostly sunny, with a high near 75. West wind 5 to 10 mph.
Saturday Night Mostly cloudy, with a low around 53. North northwest wind 5 to 10 mph.
Sunday Partly sunny, with a high near 69. East northeast wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.

Source: NOAA National Weather Service

All in all it looks like a pretty decent weekend is on tap at the Daytona International Speedway. Thursday is qually day and the weather looks like it will be gorgeous all day. The Continental Tire race is on Friday, and there is a 20% chance of the wet stuff making the race a little more interesting. As of now, there is no rain in the forecast during the Rolex 24 race itself.

[FormerFF]

Nice looking field as well. It is kind of disappointing that the NASCAR drivers have abandoned this race. Chip G has brought his two NASCAR drivers, and Michael Waltrip has Clint Bowyer in his car, but that's about it for current NASCAR drivers. There is lots of sports car talent in the field.

[FormerFF]

Not a lot of suspense there, as Ganassi had the advantage. Also, rather too many yellows for my taste, but some of that is just in the nature of a roval, if someone shreds a tire on the oval, they're going to pull out the yellow to go clean it up.

I still don't much care for the DP cars, too boxy and too slow, but they do put on a good show. Part of that is the wave around rule that makes it easy to recover lost laps. I was thinking of going this year as the first 24 I saw was in 1973, but decided to wait until next year when the ALMS field is mixed in. From the looks of things, I'm not the only one, as the attendance looked a bit sparse. Normally, at the end of the race, I'd expect a decent size group of fans in the stands near start-finish, but this year it only seemed like there were a couple hundred. Also, I saw a few shots of the area near the east banking, and saw a surprising amount of green space