SPINNING THE DAY AWAY

 

(No, Kevin, not "sinning")

"Oh, great, that means cold tires and I'll probably spin on my first out lap," Butch Leitzinger said when advised Tuesday of this weekend's expected Daytona weather. (For your own look at the National Weather Service's Daytona Beach predictions, click here.)

Leitzinger will be hanging with half of the 2009 Rolex 24 winners, David Donohue and Darren Law, who'll be piloting Brumos Racing's No. 59 Porsche-Riley for the 2010 season. The other two 2009 winners, Antonio Garcia and Buddy Rice, are in a No. 90 Spirit of Daytona ride for the 2010 Rolex Sports Car Series season, which starts with the Jan. 30-31 Rolex 24 at Daytona.

Leitzinger in1988 shared a Nissan 300ZX with his father, Bob Leitzinger, and brother, Chuck Kurtz, for his first Rolex 24. The team finished fifth in GTU and 24th overall.

Since then, Butch Leitzinger has won three Rolex 24s, the first coming in 1994 with Scott Pruett, Paul Gentilozzi and Steve Millen in another Nissan 300ZX (GTS class, this time), completing 707 laps and veritably cruising to a 22-lap margin of victory over a second-place Bob Wollek, Dominique Dupuy, Jesus Peraja-Mayo and Juergen Barth's Porsche 911S LM.

That year's closest-finishing WSC prototype, a Spice-Oldsmobile AK93 (ask your grandfather) - open-cockpit's first year of competition and from which the current-generation Audi R-series would spawn - finished ninth and was driven by Price Cobb, Jeremy Dale, Ruggero Melgrati and Bob Schader. 

Butch Leitzinger then followed with wins in 1997 and 1999, came close in 2005 in a second-place with Jimmie Johnson and full-season teammate Elliott Forbes-Robinson, driving the Ricky Howard, David Brule-owned No. 4 Pontiac-Crawford DP-03 (right).

The following year, in 2006, Johnson would win his first of four NASCAR Sprint Cup championships, the most recent in 2009.

"I guess you could say Jimmie wouldn't have won 'em if not for driving with Elliott and me," Butch said tongue-in-cheek.

"Really, you could see even back then that Jimmie was loaded with talent. Even though it was his first time in a sportscar we didn't have to teach him a lot. He absorbed it all pretty quickly."

Johnson will team again this year with the GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing No. 99 Pontiac-Riley in the hunt for a treasured Rolex timepiece only a relatively few racers will ever wear.

Having "hung around the last couple of years" during Daytona tests trying to get a Rolex 24 ride, Leitzinger expressed honor in teaming with Brumos Racing for the Jan. 30-31 twice-around-the-clock race.

"To come back and be able to run with a team having the quality of Brumos is beyond my expectations," he said.

"But because the Brumos ride is only for the (Rolex) 24, I'm hoping to scare up a ride for the rest of the season while I'm down there. At least I'll be able to talk with some teams about that."

Still, for those who are coming to a "sunny, warm" Daytona Beach, the latest-available National Weather Service Melbourne (not Australia) office statement (as of 8 a.m. Thursday) reads:

"Friday: A 30 percent chance of showers, mainly after 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 52. Wind chill values as low as 32 early. Southwest wind 5 to 15 mph becoming northwest. Winds could gust as high as 20 mph.

"Friday Night: A chance of rain showers before 4am, then a chance of rain showers, snow showers, and sleet. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 33. Wind chill values as low as 26. Northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. "

A fifth-generation Florida boy (and there aren't many, relative to the nearly seven-in-ten, non-native Floridians now living in the state) knows that Friday's conditions could create one of those very rare times - about once every 15-20 years - that snow floats in the Daytona Beach skies.

And no, fifth-generation Florida boys, having gotten over snow flurries long, long ago, aren't thrilled to see such. At least this one isn't.

The primary reason: Floridians, the multi-generational native kind, have only the barest of clues as to how to deal with roads so cold that tire compounds don't easily grip.

Though he probably didn't know it, Leitzinger hit the nail on the head with regard to spinning cars. Only, they'll be doing it in a lot of places other than on Daytona International Speedway's 3.56-mile road course.

Yet, that $10 DIS price of admission - for those who haven't got the wherewithal for hiding in unheated car trunks or possessing credentials - is looking like a better value minute by minute.

Dress warmly, because Ye Ol' NWS Melbourne (not Australia) office predicts it's only gonna get even colder Saturday and Sunday.

ADDING ON

A Thursday-morning perusal of the Jan 8-10 Roar Before The 24 Entry List shows some late adds, just when some were wondering, "Wonder what happened to Scott Tucker's team, which showed such great promise last year?"

The answer: Tucker's Level 5 Motorsports is bringing two (Steve Dinan tweaked) BMW-powered Rileys to this weekend's three-day test at DIS, whereupon Rolex Series cars hit the track at 9 a.m. Friday. On the track at 10 a.m. are those cars on hand for the GRAND-AM (all-caps, newest style) newly named Continental Tire Sports Car (still two words even though most publications, under the "Local Rules" provision of the AP Stylebook's "Rules Of Golf," allow for the one-word sportscar variation) Challenge.

The latter brings to mind the old Firehawk Series, wherein Skip Barber's Terry Earwood once won a race or two. Earwood did a little better in the world of drag racing, eventually admitted to a hall-of-fame or two.

Seems to me the now long gone Firestone Firehawk Series ran on street radials having shaved tread, but only slightly so.

Boy, tread might come in handy Friday at DIS.

Tucker's Level 5 Motorsports is bringing its Nos. 55 and 95 cars along with 1995 Rolex 24 winner Christophe Bouchut, who in 2009 joined Frenchman Romain Dumas (each contesting for a win) in pulling a Rolex Series restart violation and saw a probable victory (at Watkins Glen) nullified as a result (well, okay, Bouchut only pulled the boner half as often as Dumas and a third as often as Dumas and co-driver Timo Bernhard, combined; those incidences being at least partly responsible for Penske Racing's 2009 sportscar win shutout).

(Of course, despite this writer having been smacked with cold, hard realities that romanticism rarely overcomes, one is inclined to give Penske Racing a little credit for at least running in the 2009 Rolex Sports Car Series when they could've stayed where they'd previously raced and likely again would've won nearly every race - which for the past defeated was like squaring off for a knife fight with someone wielding a grapeshot-filled howitzer.

Tucker's a competent driver, having won the 2009 Ferrari Challenge and having in the past competed well but falling just short of the title in the same series - but the 24-hour race ain't nothing like the Challenge.

Bouchut is one fast, smooth driver. So is Raphael Matos. The two paired last year with Tucker and longtime Level 5 type-of-guy Ed Zabinski in the No. 55 BMW-Riley, finishing 19th overall after 665 laps.

For a decent shot at scoring some very, very expensive Rolex timepieces and with Matos already teamed at Brumos Racing, Tucker will be looking elsewhere for driving talent - the good news being that the price of acquiring such is relatively cheaper this year.

Should Tucker get a compliment of competent drivers the team's probability of finishing well will increase proportionately and should be considered a substantial dark horse.

Still another BMW team, "Starworks Motorsports," was a late sign-up, too, for this weekend. After the Rolex 24 the driving team - which includes Grand-Am veterans Bill Lester and Dion Von Moltke - will morph into two Daytona Prototypes, at least according to a team principal - some guy by the name of Peter Baron.

"We don't think of ourselves as a dark horse," Baron said after hearing a reporter say as much about his team's 2007 second-place Rolex 24 run.

"This deal was the next-to-latest I've ever put together," Baron said, adding that the latest he'd worked to put a deal together and have it happen was Christmas Eve 2006 - the deal that led to the SAMAX taking second on the following Rolex 24's podium.

At least five BMW engines now are in the 2010 Rolex 24 - a quantitative improvement over the last few years that harkens to that of the Ford-engine "migration" a few seasons ago.

The reason: the Dinan BMW V8 engine is stout and excellently tuned - people are learning of it.

Mike Hull - since the early 1990's the organizational brain behind Chip Ganassi Racing's success in open wheel and sportscar racing - recently spoke of Dinan's "professionalism" and his engine team's on-the-ground "technical expertise" in as high a manner as this writer has ever heard Hull speak.

Speaking frankly, Hull had expected worse, though he didn't put sit in as few words. Bottom line: Hull's impressed with Dinan's operation.

In the hands of a crack driver like Bill Auberlen, a Dinan-tuned BMW engine proved itself years ago by scoring a surprise victory for Sigalsport at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2007.

Dinan's engine has only gotten better, since.

STILL MORE DAYTONA PROTOYPES?

Rumors are stirring of another prospective two-to-four Rolex 24 DPs on the radar screen but even if they don't show, the 15-or-so that'll be at the Rolex 24 shouldn't be terribly surprising given the overall economy - one that's improving, for sure, but still with a long way to go.

Coming up: don't take "Loles" out on Dominik Farnbacher.

Later,

DC