Daytona24: Banner Racing early retirement report

The No. 07 Banner Racing Camaro GT.R retired this morning with a little less than seven hours remaining in the Rolex 24. The team got caught up in a wreck early in the race and later went to the garage to change a broken driveshaft. An axle failure led to the final decision. Team owner Leighton Reese talked about the team's struggles this weekend.

LEIGHTON REESE -- OWNER, NO. 07 BANNER RACING CAMARO GT.R --

"I just hate to give up, but that's what we're doing. We're in a position where we can't improve our position because we're so far down, and we've just been battling demons the whole time. We have a great car, a great team, but, you know, we just have to admit defeat here. We can get the car going, but we're just making our team weaker for the rest of the year, burning good parts and expensive parts and stuff like that. We're thankful for all of the help from Chevrolet and The Cool TV, and we're just going to have to regroup and reorganize. This whole deal is like a three-month project, and I'm a little bit depressed and disappointed right now, and I feel just terrible, but, I tell you, we're making the right decision. We'll regroup and come back at it. It's just one these kinds of races where only a couple of things can go right and a thousand things can go wrong."

HOW WERE THINGS GOING FOR YOU DURING THE VERY EARLY STAGES OF THIS RACE, BEFORE THE WRECK? "We were at one point three laps down, and we got one lap back. With three of our drivers we were turning laps the same times as the leaders -- and in a race this long you can get laps back fairly easily -- and it was going real well, and then, unfortunately, when Eric Curran was driving the car, there was a wreck. You know, after a restart there's a high density of cars, and a couple of cars bounced off each other -- one went off the track and came back on backwards and we collected him. It was not a whole lot different that rush hour on the freeway. Anyway, that was the beginning of the end. We actually recovered from that okay and got back up to, like, 12th spot, even though we were in the pits for a while, but now with the axle failure, which wiped out a really expensive part in the transmission, and a few things like that, we just can't improve our position any more."

-source: team chevy