Daytona proves a dream experience

Flying Fifer Jonny Adam is the reigning British GT champion and drives for Aston Martin Racing in the 2016 World Endurance Championship

In the course of winning the British GT Championship last year I was lucky enough to land an amazing opportunity to drive with one of the top teams at the legendary Daytona 24 Hours in the United States.

So after a hectic 2015 season with Aston Martin Racing, the start of the year saw me head to Florida for three days of testing.

Although I had driven an Aston Martin GT race car at Daytona once before, this time I was in a completely different type of machine called a Daytona Prototype.

It’s the American version of the sort of thing that competes in the top class of Le Mans, half-way between a single-seater and GT car in terms of performance.

It’s seriously quick, hitting 194mph on the longest section of the track!

After the test it was a two week break then back out at the end of the month for the big race.

It’s a huge event, and to be given this opportunity to be in with a championship-winning team like Action Express Racing along with super-fast team-mates Eric Curran, Dane Cameron and Indycar star Simon Pagenaud was really exciting.

The race itself started really well.

We were leading overall during the night, despite a small fire in the pits that lost us a lap.

We got right back into contention and I genuinely had to pinch myself at one point thinking we might just do it and have a chance of winning one of the biggest races in the world. Then disaster struck. With about six hours to go we had a driveshaft fail and lost 10 laps while the engineers tried to fix it.

In the end we finished sixth overall.

Still, I was happy with my performance and lap times in the car and ended up driving six and a half hours altogether.

It may open doors for me racing more in America in the future, and I loved every single second.

The way things are shaping up hopefully 2016 is going to be a lot of fun on the track.

In the hot seat: Jonny and the Daytona Prototype.