BRUMOS PORSCHE 250 POSTSCRIPT

 

 

All warm and fuzzy feelings aside, Brian Frisselle, MaxAxe Angelelli and the SunTrust team shouldn’t have won Saturday’s Brumos Porsche 250 at Daytona International Speedway.

A car that usually generates great downforce but was competing on what is almost the antithesis of a downforce track, the Ford-Dallara encountered more high-speed sections than turns and shouldn’t have done well.

At least, so expressed one MaxAxe after the race.

“The car (Dallara) had no downforce and I did not like it, (the setup)” MaxAxe said. “The wing was flat and I was doing all I could to keep the car on the track through the (infield) turns. If (Alex) Gurney had gotten by I do not think I would have been able to get around him.”

Frisselle qualified and started the SunTrust Dallara third on the grid, then proceeded to run a clean race, keeping the Dallara safe, sound and within striking distance of the front. MaxAxe took over the car just about the time other leading DP teams started shooting their own feet and would go on to lead a race-high 33 laps, slipping and sliding through the turns according to MaxAxe. 

The Dallara’s downforce lack or, perhaps also said, Gurney’s greater downforce settings became apparent during repeated drag races out of the West Bank and into the chicane when his No. 99 Gainsco Auto Insurance Pontiac/Chevrolet/Government Motors-Riley would pull even with or ahead of Angelelli only to see the SunTrust regain the spot.

With the two jockeys likely mashing the gas as hard as each had ever done previously, viewers would see that magical moment where unyielding surfaces and air molecules combined to constrain Gurney from further accelerating  - whereas Angelelli and Dallara at the same moment had yet met that boundary.

On his last serious run on the penultimate lap, to Gurney’s credit he reacted to the driving championship Big Picture and not what he might have achieved by knocking MaxAxe out. After all, when cars start running into other cars, both generally lose – unless one is Tony Stewart and the other Kyle Busch.

Brian Frisselle (at left, with MaxAxe to his right), seemed a little underwhelmed by the enormity of his accomplishment. As though he’d been there and done that and the Brumos Porsche 250 was just another race he’d won. 

Maybe so, but the words he spoke (taken slightly out of context) resonated: “Even though we didn’t have the fastest car out there today.”

Um, Brian, you guys won the race, you know. Just for emphasis, let’s try it in truncated form: “race,” “win.”

Racing is an effort that ultimately puts those who make the fewest errors into Victory Lane but ya gotta go fast, man, whether crewman, some guy named Simon or a driver.

The SunTrust team won. You’re part of that team. The only bad news out of the deal is that we might well see that lousy new silver paint job for years to come.

 

RUNNERSUP, KINDA, SORTA

Coming out of Mid-Ohio second in Daytona Prototype points, Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney’s GAINSCO Auto Insurance No. 99 Pontiac-Riley team looked to end the 2009 Brumos Porsche 250 just one position better than it had in 2008, when the race briefly became the Rolex Series’ closest-ever finish and one of Gurney’s biggest professional letdowns.

Though the team didn’t exactly replicate the 2008 race, it nonetheless finished in the same spot, looking at someone else’s tailpipes. Still, Fogarty and Gurney gave it a heckuva shot. If anything might get the fickle finger of fate award it likely came when Gurney relieved Fogarty of his driving duties in what appeared to be a longer-than-normal pit stop. A dropped second here and there has been known to hurt the best Rolex Series racing effort. As the drivers of the blood-red Gainsco car clearly demonstrated for the greater part of the race, they were on their game. 

In for the race’s first shift Fogarty relentlessly pestered the No. 01 Telmex Lexus-Riley’s Memo Rojas and likely contributed to Rojas’ tire eventually letting go, even after Fogarty got around him. If only Gurney could’ve gotten a SunTrust Pirelli P-Zero tire to similarly pop, then the boys in red would’ve not only won the race and closed the points gap on the championship hunt’s No. 1 duo - Pruett and Rojas (who might be saying “Aston Martin” in their future, by the way) - they might not’ve fallen back a spot, to third, in the DP driver points. As it was, they just closed the gap. Strange thing, points figuring.

 

NOTE TO WAYNE

At a point well into the evening after the Brumos Porsche 250’s conclusion a congratulatory text sent to Wayne Taylor, owner of the race-winning No. 10 SunTrust Ford-Dallara, was met with the response: “Thanks what about my kids” (sic).

(Education time: “sic” is from Latin and, translated, its meaning is “thus; so.” Used within brackets or parentheses in journalism, it conveys that preceding verbiage, usually a quote, is precisely as was communicated. Not an indictment, judgment nor intended insult, “SIC” or “sic” only makes the reader aware that the literal has been referenced, verbatim.) 

Okay, Wayne, for the record, were you asking about Max or Simon or … nah, just kidding.

Just so you’ll know, Wayne, here’s the family rundown: After starting the race seventh, Ricky (Taylor) went on to lead for 11 laps, only falling from the point after performing the Rolex Series’ mandated 45-min pit stop. Of course, on the way to that pit stop he might’ve been a little low on gas but he drove masterfully after inheriting the lead under caution on Lap-12, during which nearly everyone else pitted for tires and gas. Yet, Rick kept the lead fair and square, pulling away from pursuers while still on old tires. His Beyer Racing No. 13 Lennox /Brach Candies Pontiac-Riley, shared with Mike Forest, eventually finished 12th after a seventh-place start, one position behind the No. 12 Verizon Wireless Porsche-Riley.

Jordan (Taylor) finished 18th overall and 15th in DP, driving the Lennox/Brach’s No. 5 Crawford Chevrolet with Jared Beyer. They drove the DP03 Crawford model, which has been known to favor an especially keen ability to drive. Both Jordan and his Brumos 250 co-driver are future talents. Trust me on that one. I’ve been watching racers race since, well, Juan Manuel Fangio was at Sebring. The Crawford DP03 has a very narrow set-up window that favors professional driver-types and, after being on that edge, they’ll benefit from that knowledge. Of course, after being in a Crawford DP03 the Riley feels like a comfortable old shoe (oh, Bill’s gonna be just a little irritated with me for the “old” part).

About as close to a point-and-shoot car as was ever in the DP class, the supposed rub of the Crawford DP03 is one of being ‘unforgiving.’ Put another way: a driver in Andy Wallace’s league would do well with it; a driver who made a living elsewhere by day but changed into a driver’s firesuit on “off” days likely wouldn’t. The present Gentleman Jack Crawford is another story. Entirely.

Shelley (Taylor) melted away in the humidity.

Oh, and you expressed post-race glee (right).

 

 

NO SANDBAGGER, HE

The Penske Racing No. 12 Verizon Wireless Porsche-Riley of Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas were so slow in Saturday’s first practice that other teams were certain the Verizon Wireless car was “sandbagging” from the get-go. When they placed fifth-fastest in qualifying such was supposed to be only an inkling of what the car would do in the Brumos Porsche 250.

“I swear, I’m doing all that I can to go fast in the car,” Bernhard said just before the qualifying session. “We are not sandbagging.”

Sandbagging or no, the “team” also somehow missed the gearing, setting off the 3.99 Flat-Six’s rev limiter at about the DIS tri-oval’s Start/Finish line and partway through the “SuperStretch” grandstands coming out of the West Bank. Reportedly, there was no post-qualifying gearbox or transaxle change so it all doesn’t quite neatly “compute” considering the Verizon Wireless car started fifth. Also blamed was “the draft.”

Whatever the case, one-day race events greatly favor those teams having the deepest “book.” Penske Racing’s a new team on the Rolex Series’ block and, without a detailed notebook to tell it that the July Daytona International Speedway track is dramatically different from the January DIS track, it’s understandable the team would miss a setup on what, for them, was an altogether new track. But gearing? And so badly?

 

VENTING A BIG STINK

Saturday’s first practice session hardly started when John Pew and his No. 6 Mike Shank Racing Ford-Riley took an off at the chicane - or, perhaps, took off at the chicane. It works either way because the car was hurt when it landed.

“Just a dumb move; I stunk,” Pew said while berating himself afterward, walking alone.

It’s always a gas to see someone walking alone, cussing incompletely in incomplete sentences. Such makes for a good laugh when one really knows the guy isn’t a blithering idiot.

“WHAT THE …!” (stifled in a fist-clenched, momentary silence, with a half-step right, then one quickly to the left just before emitting) “…  YOU NINCOM…!”

“But how can you not push it to the limit?” he answered himself calmly with a shoulder shrug, his head alternately turning from one side to the other as each alter ego got in some conversational licks.

The MSR Bruise Crew (get it: “black and blue?”) had roughly three hours to completely replace the Riley’s undertray, free the car of dirt, grass and, according to Pew, “a big stink” so as to get it ready to roll for the show. They did it just in the nick of time, too, with the car getting in a darn good burnout on pit road during the false grid.

They (another team effort, to be sure) made the race, and got as high as second during a Lap-16 restart.

Just when it seemed as though a fairytale ending might unfold, Pew, while traversing Turn 6, gets nudged into a spin by J.C. France and his No. 59 Brumos Porsche.

Though that mean ol’ France was assessed a penalty, a look at video shows Pew apparently checking up as another car ahead did the same as everyone tried to turn a big left. France, probably not keen on checking, just tried to miss it all but, well, didn’t.

Still, Pew and Michael Valiante drove an otherwise untested car to a fourth-place finish, overall. Pretty good for a car that earlier was thought might not make the show and for Pew, who looked truly bemused over having won the race’s Trueman Award.

 

OUT OF IT

Early Brumos Porsche 250 retirees included the No. 58 Brumos Racing Porsche-riley of David Donohue and Darren Law which the former brought to a halt near the chicane early in the race with smoke billowing from the cockpit supposedly caused by some crossed wires – another $100k down the drain, minimum.

Falling from grace at about the same time as Donohue was Andrew Davis’ Stevenson Motorsports’ No. 57 BryanMark Pontiac GXP.R. Davis shut down the engine as soon as he saw his LS6 engine temps go stratospheric due to a blown head gasket. Probably saved $20,000 but the price may be even steeper because he and co-driver Robin Liddell have fallen a little farther behind points leaders Leh Keen and Dirk Werner, who’s No. 87 Farnbacher Loles Racing Porsche GT3 won the Brumos Porsche 250.

MUST MAKE RADIO SHOW …

Tune in at 7:05 p.m. ET tonight for Chip Ganassi Racing’s Mike Hull, Roush Yates’ John Maddox and Kevin Doran Racing’s Kevin Doran – who will explain what happened to the No. 77 South African Airways Ford-Dallara at race start. Go to http://tiny.cc/wU2nR to catch the Web stream. If you miss it, select audio will be extracted and offered later at www.grand-am.com.

Later

DC