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At the track, I never confused the sound of the Zytek with the Acura at any point. On the over run, I ducked a few times. And, as for the relative speed of the Intersport versus the Acuras, you only had to look at the rear wing angle and the wild slides in the turns to see where the Intersport speed was coming from. It was very clear from the track layout (one 3500 ft straight, one 1000 ft straight and the rest of the distance mostly high and medium speed turns) that a good qualifying setup (high downforce) would be all wrong for the race because the speed through the majority of the course would be determined by the slowest car that did not give up the line. The offset to the low downforce strategy would be tire wear from all the long, high and medium speed turns and slip sliding around. But there was no way a responsible team manager would set up as loose as Fields did just to run a few laps near the front.
One of the things I don't think was caught by most was that the 21 Panoz ran out of fuel or otherwise had a problem on the back part of the course and lost about 12 seconds on his in lap to the last fuel stop. Without that, the 21 had a pretty good shot at the podium. All top speed, of course, and he held up the 18 in the twisty bits for many laps. Still, a well set up and driven effort by the 21.
The GT3 cars were not the disaster I expected but there were a lot of very close calls and the protos were very obviously hesitating and waving a giant "I'm here" flag when approaching from the rear. I still don't see what they (GT3s) add. If you are a fan, you don't care and if you are a casual attendee, you are already so confused by 4 classes that look like 2 classes and a field so jumbled by varying fuel/tire strategies that even the RLM announcers get confused that you give up and have another beer then go home before the race is over. That's what they did Sunday, anyway. Well, not the beer. It was SLC, after all.
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