FACING THE MUSIC

 

Once popular at kids' elementary schools, birthday parties or other social occasions was a game known as "Musical Chairs."

In case someone somehow somewhere is absent of knowledge about the game's nature: Conducted in proximity to a 45 rpm record player (ask your grandfather or, perhaps, great-grandfather), assembled is a group of children who encircle a line of chairs having one fewer in number than the children.

Musical Chairs' Premise: Somebody is gonna lose each time; guaranteed.

(A third grouping further encircling the first two usually is comprised of adults who often alternately display great joy and much despair which, one supposes, nowadays might well lead to fisticuffs. But that's another game; the description of which awaiting some other day.)

Musical Chairs' Play: Whilst children players undertake a slow, Druid-like counterclockwise walk around the chairs' grouping, someone else, usually an adult harboring sadistic tendencies, spins the platter (ask your grandfather or, perhaps, great-grandfather) and places the record-player's arm (ask your grandfather or, perhaps, great-grandfather) so as to reproduce musical sound broadcast by the music player's 2-inch "Hi-Fidelity" speaker (ask your grandfather or, perhaps, great-grandfather or, still yet, someone knowledgeable of The Dark Ages) .

Musical Chairs' Play, continued: The aforementioned record-playing adult will without warning cause the music to abruptly halt, whereupon the once slow-moving counterclockwise circle of children breaks into a scrambled dust cloud wherein each child seeks to occupy a single chair.

Once the available chairs are filled, the remaining, unseated child is removed from the scrum area, as is still another chair. Thus allowed is another cycle of music-induced counterclockwise, Druid-like walking; another dust-up; and, as importantly, another loser.

If accurately contested, the process guarantees losers for each cycle until just one whining, um, no, make that "winning" kid occupies a sole remaining chair - often coincidentally a favored child of the person controlling the music's play.

(NOTE: In 1978, at the start of the "Everyone Should Feel Good" era, Musical Chairs' rules were slightly altered, allowing the chairs' number to equal that of the children. However, children everywhere began complaining after approximately three days' play and it was then the "Feel Gooders" decided it was in the best interest of everyone to altogether banish the game, "So that no one loses, ever again.")

WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER 

It is the Musical Chairs game which most often comes to this scribe's mind when pondering new and, sometimes, surprising driver-to-ride combinations - most often occurring during racing's supposedly "noncompetitive" off-season. (Non-competitive" my rear: sometime during a spare moment toss a "ride" in the middle of a ride-deprived drivers' group and see what happens.)

Perhaps the earliest and most surprising 2010 drivers' move came at the June 2009 EMCO GEARS Mid-Ohio race when Buddy Rice and Antonio Garcia (at 2009 Rolex 24 with Darren Law, left-to-right) teamed to drive the No. 90 Spirit of Daytona Cayenne-Coyote entry.

Garcia and Rice earlier in season teamed with David Donohue and Darren Law in driving the Rolex 24-winning Brumos No. 58 Porsche-Riley.

Now seen as the Coyote "factory team" after Daytona Prototype constructor Eddie Cheever surrendered his team-ownership role in the series, Spirit of Daytona owners Troy and Michele Flis now have at least two fully assembled Coyotes which bear the likely "surprise" engine of 2010 - a Porsche Cayenne-based V-8 being developed by one of racing's longest standing engine tuners, Lozano Brothers Porting (LBP).

Based north of San Antonio in New Braunfels, Texas, the Lozano family business, headed by brothers Mike and Ben Lozano, has for decades been churning out powerful race car power plants, mostly Chevrolet-based, shoe-horned into sprint cars and prototypes - the latter including a now-legendary racing outfit based near Midland, Texas, named "Chaparral."

"This Cayenne project has infused a new level of energy in the guys in the shop," Ben Lozano said.

"I don't want to give the impression that we don't care about the engines we regularly produce because we do care a lot about quality and do our darndest to make sure every engine is the best that can be built. But the new Cayenne project has gotten the creative juices flowing again. It's a completely different animal and we're having a lot of fun learning about it."

Once a Minardi F1 test driver and joining the Coyote team in 2008, Garcia (at far right with Christian Fittipaldi, near left, at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2008) remains contracted to Cheever as a test driver. The Spaniard also has posted two Le Mans 24-hour GT-class wins (2008, Aston Martin DBR9; 2009), Corvette C6.R).

Rice (snarling  at left in December DIS Test), the 2004 Indy 500 winner, also has deep connections to Cheever beyond their respective Indy 500 wins, including an 18-race driving stint with Red Bull Cheever Racing during the 2002 and 2003 Izod IndyCar Series' seasons.

The two will be joined for the Jan. 30-31 Rolex 24 At Daytona by NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Paul Menard, who in 2010 will drive a Richard Petty Motorsports Ford. In 2002, Menard captured two Rolex Series (American GT) class wins in a Spirit of Daytona Corvette, which earlier in the season was driven by GM factory driver Andy Pilgrim (w/ Craig Conway, Doug Goad, Michael Ciasulli) to a Rolex 24 class win.

Though yet to be officially entered, the Spirit of Daytona team will put its No. 09 Cayenne-Coyote in the show with sportscar ace Guy Cosmo, 5-time Daytona 200 motorcycle champ Scott Russell and Englishman Derek Johnston (pictured below driving in his Radical UK Cup SR8), who drove his Radical SR8 to a 2009 Radical UK Cup series championship.

For 2010, the SOD team has: two outstanding drivers in Garcia and Rice; a dedicated constructor in Cheever, whose motorsports résumé is envied by many; an LBP engine program now beyond embryonic; an increased 2010 test budget; and, a team ownership who has won races and championships at the professional and amateur levels. Look for notable 2010 achievement from this otherwise unheralded team.

Having in an earlier post dealt with much of the change affecting Brumos Racing's Nos. 58 and 59 Porsche-Riley cars, nevertheless remaining are a few notes on the personnel who filled the 2009 Rolex 24's final podium spot.

One-half of Brumos Racing's 2009 No. 59 Porsche-Riley team has morphed into an "associate" car, Action Express Motorsports' No. 9 Porsche Cayenne-powered Riley (also an LBP-tweaked engine).

There were a couple of factors as to why and how this team is now constituted.

Long before passing into the Great Racing Gig In The Sky, former Brumos Racing point man Bob Snodgrass made it clear the two-car team wouldn't last forever and, in his last couple of years, grew closer to at least partially pulling the plug. (at below right, in 2001 at DIS laying a big one on Gainesville Raceway’s Don Robertson, for whom Snodgrass evidently had a “thing”).

However, Snodgrass wasn't what others might characterize as a "loser" (at least, not doing so without considerable personal peril) and therefore kept the two-car effort alive "until we start winning again because I don't want Brumos to be known as a quitter," he said not too long before his untimely death in 2007.

At that time a debate over the team's change of DP constructors was still fresh and while everyone at Brumos hoped the results would quickly come, Snodgrass had been a pragmatic racer and businessman who knew to expect otherwise.

(The “new” No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche Riley at DIS  December Pirelli Tire test.)

 

Such awareness didn't vanish when now-principal team owner Dan Davis - a likewise successful businessman who's attended a majority of Rolex Series races since the team's founding - at Snodgrass' death took a more visible role in the team's operation.

Although Brumos agonizingly came close to winning in 2008, it still was riding a winless streak begun after the No. 58 Porsche-Fabcar (David Donohue, Mike Borkowski) won on 21 Sep., 2003, at Mont Tremblant.

Though assuredly desiring a win wherever it may come, if there is any race Brumos most wishes to win it is the Rolex 24 At Daytona - a race that Brumos' best known face, Hurley Haywood (at far right, suggesting a toothache cure to Wayne Taylor, left, during December DIS Pirelli Tire test) won five times.

(By the way: at Homestead-Miami and Phoenix International in the No. 59 Fabcar-Porsche, Haywood and co-driver J.C. France captured two of Brumos Racing's five 2003 race wins).

When the Brumos name first crossed the 2009 Rolex 24 finish line also ended was a "home track" victory dry spell dating to 1991, when the No. 7 Joest Porsche 962, partially funded by Brumos and driven by Haywood, Louis Krages (a.k.a., John Winter), Henri Pescarolo, Frank Jelinski and Bob Wollek, won the race.

Incidentally, the 1991 Rolex 24 proved to be the 962's final Rolex 24 win - done at the head of a 46-car field.

Again winning races and particularly having done so at the end of sportscar racing's toughest endurance test, Snodgrass and Brumos' mission was fulfilled.

Slash one car budget.

Thus, the No. 9 Action Express Cayenne-Riley is both new and old to the Rolex Series.

"New" in name only, Action Express Racing has the benefit of highly experienced team members, from floor sweeper to drivers.

For the Rolex 24, 2010 fulltime No. 9 drivers Jaoa Barbosa and Terry Borcheller are joined by Scotsman Ryan Dalziel and Switzerland's Mike Rockenfeller. Inasmuch as each driver has a Rolex 24 podium on his résumé, the team is one of the race's most experienced and, likely, deeply undervalued.

At the present essentially being a Brumos operation, Action Express Racing and Brumos Racing have said they'll "share technical information" but, frankly, one is hard pressed to see the value of shared data alternately gathered by V-8 and Flat-six teams when, at the least, engine weight, drive train, transaxle, center of gravity, etc., are surely different.

Oh, in order is one more "old No. 59" driver mention, J.C. France:

Let he who has never missed a shift cast the first gearbox.

A paraphrase, the above is neither flippant or irreverent. It neither provides escape nor excuse. Despite one's philosophical or theological bent, the original conveys great wisdom simply so. This writer merely attempts to convey the thought in a manner perhaps most easily understood by gear heads.

More to come on SunTrust, MSR, TRG, Dempsey Racing, FarnbacherLoles and others before this week's Roar Before The Rolex 24 at Daytona International, but first ...

Later,

DC

CORRECTIONS and OMISSIONS:

Hurley Haywood was regretfully omitted from the Brumos Racing No. 59 Porsche-Riley driving team lineup described in the previous post (Thanks, Hurley!).

"Thanks" also to an anonymous but sharp-eyed reader, who caught the previous post's incorrect reference to Michael Shank Racing's 2006 second-place Rolex 24 finish. MSR's No. 60 (Ozz Negri, Mark Patterson, AJ Allmendinger, Justin Wilson) finished second alright, but it was with Lexus power and not as stated.