Mid-O Post Script

 

Great crowd Saturday; best I can remember visually, despite Friday’s daylong weather front that started raining cats and dogs before sunrise. Though likely having negative effect on the overall weekend, it certainly was the best-attended I’ve seen at the storied Mid-O track.

SERIOUSLY, FOLKS - Separated only by a paddock access lane, Wayne Taylor’s SunTrust and  CGRwFyJS TELMEX teams sat side-by-side on the Mid-O pit road (BTW: a ‘road’ is something on which vehicles travel; a ‘row’ is found in corn fields). So, SunTrust’s Simon Hodgson could see Telmex’s Tim Keene launch like a Patriot missile when No. 10 SunTrust driver Brian Frisselle steered the Ford-Dallara Daytona Prototype into the team’s pit between recon-lap start and hard grid. Of course, the SunTrust gang (Travis Jacobson and Taylor) would similarly later launch when the Telmex team was deemed to have also transgressed the rulebook.

POKER FACE – Unlike a fairly emotional Wayne Taylor, CGRwFyJS’ Tim Keene is an interesting sort: quiet, usually stone faced, which well suits those within the Ganassi organization. A lot can be communicated through body language and the Ganassi gang places great emphasis on communicating nothing more than absolutely necessary. Hint to Tim: Mike Hull doesn’t wear sunglasses while golfing.

THE OLD IN AND OUT? Having its drivers fourth in the Rolex Series points, rumor has it that the Penske hierarchy is getting a tad frustrated and is pondering a Rolex Series departure, especially if it fails to do well at Daytona’s July 4 Brumos 250. “Well” being largely subjective, who knows the team’s exact intentions or even if it’s only posturing. 

With a storied racing history that includes 15 Indy 500 wins, 10 CART (defunct) and one Indy Racing League championship it’s clear the Penske organization has done well in open-wheel racing, if not entirely bulletproof there (remember the team altogether failing to qualify for the ‘95 Indy after dominating in 1994?)

Though Penske’s Kurt Busch (2004 Sprint Cup champion while with Roush Racing) looks strong with a comfortable current top-5 in NASCAR’s 2009 Sprint Cup championship, Penske Racing nonetheless hasn’t captured a Cup since first entering that series in 1972. Joe Gibbs Racing, on the other hand, has captured three of that series’ crowns despite about 100 fewer Sprint Cup starts.

So, while Penske Racing has done well largely in North American open-wheel racing, it hasn’t fared as well in stock cars even though most everyone thought otherwise when it entered the fray.

In sportscar racing, starting with the last race of the 2005 ALMS season at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, LMP2 Penske Porsche Spyder drivers Lucas Luhr and Sascha Maassen nevertheless finished ninth in a championship whose winner, Clint Field, scored points in only 70-percent of the races. Don’t get me wrong here - this writer being well aware he can’t drive a race car - but season champs usually score at least some points in every race.

In 2006, only two teams competed in all 10 LMP2 races; a third team – a second Penske Porsche joining at the second race in Houston – competed in 9 of 10 races. No other LMP2 team scored points in more than 50-percent of the LMP2-class championship races that year, won by Messrs. Luhr and Maassen.

Of the 12 ALMS LMP2 races in 2007, present-day Penske Racing No. 12 Verizon Wireless Porsche-Riley DP drivers Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas dominated their first ALMS LMP2 championship season with eight victories as one of four LMP2 teams that would score points for the entire 2007 season. In that season’s12 events Bernhard and Dumas claimed overall wins in half of the ALMS races contested and won what turned out to be a '”theoretical” overall ALMS championship crown.

Other than press releases or blogs claiming otherwise (which surely exist somewhere) for 2007 there is no formal championship points tabulation showing the Penske team as having won anything but the LMP2 class championship.

A Penske PR piece about that 2007 season interestingly states: “Not only did (Bernhard and Dumas) win the (ALMS) LMP2 championship, finish all 12 races on the podium and claim a class victory eight times, but they also beat the faster LMP1 prototypes to win six ALMS races overall …” (emphasis added).

How can one win a race, more so six of ‘em, and be slower?

Posing the same question and coming up with an answer intended to slow the Porsche Spyder in any competition using the name “Le Mans,” the France-based (as in “country”) governing rules-maker ACO (Automobile Club de l'Ouest, from which the American Le Mans Series purchases the use of its “Le Mans”  connection) issued a 2008 rules package mandating additional LMP2 air intake restrictions, among other changes.

Considered detrimental by the ALMS - citing its need to determine what was best for American Le Mans Series competition - that series resisted ACO rules-adherence pressure until well into the 2008 season. (A point, as this writer understands, the ACO made in return when it this year listened to but denied an ALMS representative’s vociferous objection to Patrick Dempsey’s competing in the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans.)

Without being slowed for the first part of the 2008 season, the ALMS LMP2 season that year played out in much the same way with Bernhard and Dumas at the top of the LMP2 championship, wherein a second-place Scott Sharp and David Brabham Patron team scored zero points at the Road Atlanta race. Only one other team, Dyson Racing’s Butch Leitzinger and Marino Franchitti, would score points in all 11 of 2008’s ALMS LMP2 races - and it finished fifth in the 2008 LMP2 championship points.

Some say maybe, just maybe Penske Racing’s ALMS dominance just wasn’t all it was thought to be.

Many others in the Rolex Series paddock believe Penske Racing’s engineers and drivers have yet to learn that the Daytona Prototype is designed to drive and slide, not point and shoot. Still others think Dumas and Bernhard incapable of adapting to a race car which doesn’t mostly “think” for the drivers.

Whatever, it seems out of character for such a storied organization to cut and run.

GOOD READ - 

Awaiting my Sunday return from Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, at left is one of those books you just don’t want to put down but must, to tell others of it. This publisher’s edition, as are the others of only 300 such, is signed by author Mike Argetsinger – son of Watkins Glen race founder Cameron Argetsinger – and also is signed by team owner Roger Penske, sons David and Mike Donohue, Mark Donohue crew chief Karl Kainhofer, drivers Sam Posey and George Follmer.

The same book, sans the autographs, is also available at www.bullpublishing.com, which is dedicated to books about racing. Get one. Trust me.

NEXT PIT - With Jim Beam livery, Robby Gordon will be running with Bill Lester in Peter Barron’s SAMAX No. 45 Riley for the 3 p.m. July 4 Brumos 250 at Daytona International Speedway.

The Kyle Busch and Scott Speed combo, with Waste Management and Red Bull sponsorship, will be there, too. Something you should already know unless having made like an island castaway the last week or so.

Later.

DC