The Longest Day History

I did put some of the drivers signed up in this race

The 2015 running of the Longest Day

The 23 cars out of 48 attempting lined up on the grid for the longest day. 46 drivers would be slotted to race in the most prestigious race of the season.

Marinio Baldi snagged the pole, and on his outside it was his teammate Leonardo Tiruluzzi. Baldi took off from the green followed by Kenny Myatt who started 3rd on the grid. Tiruluzzi would fall back to fight Micheal Cavagnaro who did the first stint allowing for his father to run Stints 2 and 3. A little further back Dodd and 2010 Series champion Ryan Griffin engaged in a heated battle for 5th at the end of lap 5 of this 5 hour race. The first accident took place at the 20 minute mark when Hirano misjudged her breaking point and drove into the back of one off driver Curtis Maxim entering Oak Tree Bend. Both drivers were racing rather hard since the start of the race for 15th position and fell out of the race snagging the 22nd and 23rd finishing positions.

At the first hour mark, Myatt fell back with a puncture putting him 30 seconds behind Baldi. Baldi then was under attack by Micheal Cavagnaro for the lead. Baldi then drove to the pit lane to undercut the Cavagnaro crew on strategy. Tiruluzzi now was gaining on race leader Cavagnaro.

At the 1:30 min mark the top ten looked like this

1. Cavagnaro/Cavagnaro
2. Tiruluzzi/Montechello
3. Griffin/Jasper
4. Dodd/Turbo
5. Baldi/Ryan
6. Myatt/Perkins
7. Ericsson/Malprave
8. Perclies/Collins
9. Kronenberg/Ludwig
10. Brock/Yurivoinivich


At the 1:45 minute mark teams began to make their driver swaps. The Cavagnaro brigade planned on doing only one driver swap by having Alan Cavagnaro run the final 3 hours and 15 min on his own. Ferrari on the other hand kept Tiruluzzi in the car and have Montechello take over for the final stint. Marinio Baldi passed his car over to former 4 time series champion Tom Ryan. While Kenny Myatt passed his car over to Stock Car star Sean Perkins. At the 2 hour mark, Jessica Malprave fell out of the race bringing the Swedish one off teams chances to a dwindle. Paul Jasper was beginning to pull away from Tommy Turbo in P3. Alan Cavagnaro reigned in 4th position, however that team could have a strategy to win the race. By this point due to pit strategy, Triuluzzi had lapped the field.

The next bit of trouble took place as a 3 car wreck took out Kyle Collins, Sergey Yurivoinivich, and the lapped car of Audra Baranauskas. Baranauskas was not being a very good back marker, and the heated battle between the Perclies/Collins car and the Brock/Yurivoinivich car didn't make matters any better.

The race continued onward with another round of drivers changes approching at the 3:30 mark. By this point however, Tiruluzzi was clearly fatigued and was loosing upwards of 2 seconds a lap to everyone else. His driver swap was hampered when he needed help getting out of the car. When Montechello was released, he came out right behind Alan Cavagnaro who was running on older brakes as his "extended pit stop" was during in between Stints 1 & 2. The battle for the win was on between Giancarlo Montechello and Alan Cavagnaro.

The two drivers clearly had an advantage by leading everyone else by more then a lap. Cavagnaro on older brakes dove the car in as deep as possible, stealing every line possible from Montechello. Meanwhile the fastest two cars on the track were Myatt and Baldi. The beauty of doing 2 driver changes means that you can run the race on three sets of brakes rather then two. So Myatt and Baldi were going nearly 2 seconds faster then Cavagnaro and Tiruluzzi on their respective stints. Montechello had a car fast enough to beat Cavagnaro. But Cavagnaro blocked his heart out to keep him behind.

Once the final hour reigned in, all hell broke loose as a rain storm drenched the track. Myatt and Baldi dove for the pits prior to the rain storm. Leaving Griffin, Montechello, and Alan Cavagnaro out on a drenched race track with dry tires. As Montechello and Cavagnaro exited turn 13. Cavagnaro spun and Montechello nailed the side of him. Just like that P1 and P2 were out. But worse, Cavagnaro's car blocked the pit road entrance. So 3rd place Ryan Griffin couldn't pit his car for 2 extra laps loosing about 10 seconds total to Baldi and Myatt. Griffin would finally pit, and would rejoin with an 8 second lead over Baldi and Myatt who were busy swapping 2nd every other lap. With 20 minutes to go, Griffin's lead was being cut into slowly but surely. The normally calm and cool Ryan Griffin, then determined he had to turn up his fuel mix and push hard. Griffin, who has never won the longest day, then cracked under pressure and spun off in the carousel ending his race.

The hard fought battle between Myatt and Baldi was on! For the final 10 minutes the lead swapped 6 times... Until Baldi passed Myatt entering turn 1 on the final lap. Myatt fought back entering the fast sweeping turn 11 diving underneith Baldi causing them both to fly off into the grass. Myatt couldn't get his car refired and would finish 3rd, the first car one lap down. Baldi would begin moving very slowly creeping toward the line, only to be beaten in the final corner by Lukas Kronenberg who had come up from 9th to win the race for himself and Micheal Ludwig.