Green Flag 2.01.08: You Mean There's a Road Course at Daytona?
Posted by Jim Carson on 02.01.2008
I guess a sports car race isn't good enough for Ashley Judd. She's like almost everyone else and wants NASCAR.
I guess the rich just keep getting richer. Chip Ganassi Racing won its third straight Rolex 24 at Daytona as a car owner, and in the winning driver rotation were Juan Pablo Montoya and Dario Franchitti, who in the past 17 months have jumped away from their pointy-car success to race NASCAR for the Chipster and his deep pockets. And those Rolex watches for the winners are some terrific perks for the Colombian and the Scot. Of course, speaking of perks, Dario is still married to Ashley Judd, who unfortunately was not at Daytona like she had been for all of Speedwagon's IRL triumphs.
The real credit goes to Californian Scott Pruett, who was heading the winning driver lineup for the second straight year (JPM was on the winning team last year also). Pruett carried the bulk of the work load behind the wheel of the #01 Daytona Prototype, driving for almost 12 of the 24 hours, which didn't leave many stints for JPM, Speedwagon or Mexican Memo Rojas. Hopefully everything's OK with Pruett's life away from racing, because instead of "Hitomyfamilyathome" in every interview, it was "Hitomykidsathome" and it'd seem horrible to be going through a divorce right before the biggest sports car race of the year and biggest weekend of your career every year. Anyway, Pruett's the main reason why Ganassi cars have led more than 54 percent of the laps in the last three Rolex 24s (Chipster's #02 won in 2006, and Pruett's always been in the #01 since the DP class was formed before 2004). Pruett's also the big winner in the first step toward another Grand-Am championship; Rojas looks to be his co-driver all season.
My pick, the #99 Gainsco bunch with special guest and OROR NASCAR Sprint Cup titlist JJ, wound up second, but my prediction was a bit off in another way. It was certainly more than just the #01, #99 and #10 SunTrust cars in the mix, at least for the first 21 hours. Michael Shank Racing's #60 and #6 cars were on the front row for the start of the race. The #91 from the Riley-Matthews team, which surprised everyone by winning the 2007 Grand-Am season finale at that bastion of motorsports in Tooele, Utah, was in the lead group at Daytona. Heck, the only car which had all four of its drivers lead laps at one point in the race was the second-year AIM Autosport #61, with drivers Colin Braun, Andrew Ranger, Mark Wilkins, and a fellow I've talked with for a while, Brian Frisselle.
But the #01 was the only contending DP to avoid any sort of disaster; with seven hours left, there were six cars on the lead lap, but at the end the #01 won by almost three full laps. The SunTrust boys fell out of contention early when it stalled on pit road. The #99 had gearbox problems. One of Mike Shank's cars broke something early, then the #6 fell out of the LEAD with a broken suspension. Captain Roger Penske's #9 had a fuel pickup problem and had to make pit stops more than the others for the last 10 hours or so. The really heartbreaking DNF was inflicted upon the #59 Brumos Porsche team; while driver Joao Barbosa was leading with about six hours remaining, a bolt that helps hold the suspension together broke, and it sent Barbosa spinning into an infield barrier. It would have been fabulous to see one of the two Brumos cars win or finish on the podium, because team owner Bob Snodgrass passed away last fall, and Snodgrass was one of the great names in sports car racing history.
Nice to see a few sprinkles during the race once again, to jumble the pit strategy and force the teams to go back and forth between rain tires and slicks for a few hours. It was also fun to see a few cars get off track and splash in huge mud puddles, something that you don't get to see in NASCAR too often. The mud bit poor Salvador Also-ran three times, two of which were under caution when he slid off-track on cold tires. It's a good thing that Ganassi's other car won the race, or else he'd still be fuming over the fate of the #02 (although it's important to note that Also-ran wasn't behind the wheel when the #02 crashed out for good; Alex Lloyd was).
Normally I have about as much interest in the GT class of sports cars as I do in World Rally (i.e. zippo), but there was a great story with the GT-winning team owned by co-driver Sylvain Tremblay, and it wasn't because the second, third and fourth-place GT finishers were all owned by Kevin Buckler (who'll have a Craftsman Truck team this year). Sharing the driving duties for Tremblay was Raphael Matos. Matos was the 2007 champion in Champ Car Atlantics, the feeder series for Champ Car; the Atlantic champion each year gets $2 million toward a Champ Car ride the next season, and it's a guarantee that the Atlantic champ will be a rookie to watch in Champ Cars each year. Except '08, where no Champ Car team took any interest in the Brazilian star. Instead, Matos will be stuck with a ride in Andretti-Green Racing's IRL feeder series called Indy Pro; that's a lateral move at best (while IRL > Champ Car now, it's still CC Atlantic >> Indy Pro because of the history). So Matos now has a career highlight to stick on his resume.
If you're only interested in NASCAR guys, then there were the Ganassi foreigners, JJ teaming with runners-up (and 2007 Grand-Am series champs Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty), and Kurt Busch getting about equal time with Ryan Briscoe and Helio Crazydancer in the Captain's third-place finishing car. Other than that and A.J. All-Americandinger qualifying second in the Shank car, that's about it for the NASCAR participation, unless you want to count Boris Said.
I promise to focus primarily on NASCAR next week, because it will be the Green Flag's annual Prediction Spectacular! If I feel generous, I'll dig up last February's picks and see how awful they were (one that comes to mind now is Scott Riggs, Ricky Rudd and Jeremy Mayfield all in the top 20 in points).
