Kirk,
I am pretty sure that my car is 'IT2' legal. It is definitely legal according to the NASA CCR. Car prep is everything, for a sprint race or a long enduro. Since the goals our a little different, there might be some compromises made. eg I used a adjustable fuel pressure regulator to make sure that the a/f ratio never went leaner than 13.0/1. I gave up some power to make the engine last. We also went to the trouble to put in new uprights (knuckles) with new bearing/hubs f & r. The points about prep by JohnRW are good. I did blow it on the lights, though. We ran our light setup for the whole race. When my friend asked @ what point we would install the lights....duh. I didn't have time to change it to a quick mount system. Stradegy will be different. Risky passes just don't make sense. You must first finish to do well. Our goal for the race was to bring home the season championship. When it became apparent that we would, we actually started short shifting. Believe it or not, this happened around hour 4 of 12. Other cars were pushing hard. They broke.
I think as far as the 944 goes, it depends on the team. Peter Smith finished 3rd overall this year in a 968. He would have finished 2nd overall, or possibly 1st, if not for a accident late in the race. A car spun in front of him which he could not avoid. The resulting damage required him to pull his car into the paddock to repair the damage. The year before last, he ran a 944. Even though his tranny blew up, he replaced it in less than 45 min. They ended up finishing 1st or 2nd in class (can't remember). He had a failure, but he had the spare. That is also a big part of preparation. I brought 8 boxes of spare stuff for 12 Hour. Of course, we didn't have one mechanical, 'cuz...we have a Honda.
