Peter Baron’s Starworks No. 8 BMW-Riley with Ryan Dalziel at the wheel was atop the Rolex Series’ full-fledged final practice before co-driver Mike Forest took the car out for qualifying, in which he placed eighth.
Baron earlier in the day expressed his desire to “just let it all hang out” in an effort to nail down “at least one victory” this year “for (driver) Ryan” – that “one” victory pertaining to Dalziel’s driving with Starworks, for which he wasn’t driving when the fast Scotsman won this year’s Rolex 24.
As of now, breathing down Dalziel’s neck just four points behind are SunTrust’s Max Angelelli and Ricky Taylor, who on-balance have finished more 2010 races in sixth-or-worse than not.
Having an apparent handle on the 2.7-mile (4.4 km), 14-turn* Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, The SunTrust team has two wins in the previous three Montreal races: Max Angelelli winning with Jan Magnussen in 2007 (Pontiac-Riley) and again in 2009 with Brian Frisselle (Ford-Dallara).
Grand-Am says the track has “15” turns; the track guys see it as “14” while Canada’s The Globe And Mail newspaper counts “12.” The sum total average = 13.666. . .
TAKING FLIGHT
In a first, Alex Gurney drove his father’s (Dan Gurney, in case someone out there missed something, somewhere along the line) 1967 Brands Hatch-winning All American Racers’ F1 Eagle-Weslake (T1G 102; V-12) at the recent Rolex Reunion held at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway.
Asked for his first thoughts about his driving experience, Alex Gurney said:
“The first thing that comes to my mind is that it was soft. A lot of travel in the suspension, but it wasn’t as much as had been expected, actually. The engine, though, it sounded really good.”
With the Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Sabates TELMEX team looking for their eighth 20110 win and threatening to reset the Rolex Series’ single-season Daytona Prototype win record of seven races set in 2007 by Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty’s GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley, one is reminded of Dan Gurney’s All American Racing’s early-90’s win streak (which actually may be too mild of a description).
During the1992 and 1993 seasons Dan Gurney’s All American Racing Toyota Eagle GTP ran the table, picking up 17 consecutive GTP victories – among which were two Mobil 1 Sebring 12-hour races and a Rolex 24 – in the course of which were collected two driving crowns for Juan Manuel Fangio II and coincident manufacturer trophies for AAR.
Meanwhile, back at Montreal, Fogarty extended his all-time record as the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series Daytona Prototype pole leader to 16, setting a new track record in the process. Fogarty drove his No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley in qualifying for Saturday’s Montreal 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – a two-hour sprint race – that is to be broadcast live today on SPEED at 2 p.m. EDT..
Breaking his year-old Montreal qualifying record of 1:32.235 (105.734 mph), Fogarty topped the boards three different times on the way to his final 1:31.524 (106.556 mph) record.
“The most important thing today was to make sure the brakes and tires were working together, getting each to their proper temperatures,” Fogarty said afterward of his and the GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing team’s second-straight pole of the 2010 season.
“When the brakes and tires felt like they were properly meshing I’d go for a flyer, then cool ‘em down and set up another flyer and repeated the process a final time as the session ended.”
Next to Fogarty is points leader Memo Rojas, who put up a 1:31.839 (106.190 mph) in the No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley he shares with co-driver and points co-leader Scott Pruett.
“I don’t think I could’ve driven the course any better,” Rojas said. “They (the No. 99) have a very good car and it is smooth. They’ll be tough to beat.”
On the verge of setting a new Rolex Series single-season win record, Rojas and Pruett have won seven of 10 races thus far contested and aren’t slowing down.
In reality, the blue-and-white clad TELMEX pair has such a substantial championship-standings lead (302 to second-place Ryan Dalziel’s 276) that Rojas and Pruett likely needn’t even crank the car for the season’s final two races, of which Montreal is one. Yet, it’s clear they want another win and the record that goes with it.
“We don’t have anything to lose,” Rojas said in sentiments echoed by Pruett.
“I do not come to a race to run for anything less than what I can possibly achieve,” Pruett said. “I show up at a track with the intention of winning. Sometimes things happen where that doesn’t happen, but I don’t go into a race thinking it will. We want another first and we want the record (wins).”
Qualifying on the second row was a third-fast Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 SunTrust Ford-Dallara (1:32.123 @ 105.863 mph).
In the three races run here beginning in 2007, the SunTrust team has twice won (2007, 2009), splitting them with a sixth-place finish in 2008. The team has competed here using two different chassis (Riley, Dallara), two different engines (Pontiac, Ford) and five drivers: Jan Magnussen (2007), Michael Valiante (2008), Brian Frisselle (2009), Ricky Taylor (2010) and the one constant, Max Angelelli 2007-2010). Magnussen and Angelelli combined in 2007 to set the race’s record-high 85 lead laps.
Taylor and the SunTrust car will be joined on the second row by Burt Frisselle, who is driving the Canadian-based AIM Autosport No. 61 Pacific Mobile/Bio Sign Ford-Riley. Current co-driver Mark Wilkins teamed with Frisselle’s younger brother, Brian, to win in a pucker-up finish in 2008.
Brian Frisselle has as many wins (2008, 2009) in Montreal as does Angelelli and likewise accomplished such in as many different chassis (Riley, Dallara).
Wilkins closed the 2008 AIM win using the oldest Riley DP chassis, which again serves as the pair’s mount for today’s race.
LALLY OUT OF GT TITLE HUNT
Having started 2010 with a podium finish in the Rolex 24 At Daytona and since posting only a single finish (15th @ Barber) outside of the top 10 this season, Andy Lally has been doing all that he can to remain a contender for the Rolex Series’ GT driving championship hunt.
Driving for a variety of GT teams (four) who likewise provided a variety of equipment, Lally posted three firsts among his nine top-10 finishes in the driver’s determined quest to wrest a Rolex Series Grand Touring championship using whatever available means.
Though Lally thus far tops the GT driving field with the greatest number (3) of 2010 wins, a 10th-place New Jersey Motorsports Park finish and a ninth-place at The Glen soon thereafter put the driver on a down-trending slippery slope that led to his present fourth-place points spot, just one point behind a third-place Jonathan Bomarito and two-points ahead of a hard-charging James Gué and Leh Keen, who are coming off a Crown Royal 200 win at The Glen.
Added to Lally’s three Grand-Am championships and record 64 podium appearances, his nabbing a championship by undertaking such extraordinary measures would’ve alone been a worthy record accomplishment.
Alas, evidently throwing in the towel, Lally’s not even at Montreal.
But Boris Said is here, and in record fashion.
His third time this season in the Marsh Racing’s No. 31 Whelen Engineering Corvette, Said and Andrew Davis, in the Stevenson Motorsports’ No. 57 Vin Solutions Camaro, engaged in a session-long seesaw battle for today’s Grand Touring pole over the 2.7-mile (4.4 km) Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Crediting “awesome brakes,” Said posted a 1:38.895 lap, averaging 98.614 mph, as compared to Davis’ 1:38.934 (98.575 mph).
“You have to brake really deep and hard here,” Davis said, “But you just as quickly have got to come off the brakes and roll into the gas because this is such a momentum track.”
Like a dog with ears laid back, rear wings on the cars here are close to flat so as to take advantage of the track’s high speed sections, according to Davis.
“That means braking is critical,” he said. “The problem is you also have to use them wisely enough so that you’ve got plenty left at the end of the race, too.”
Davis, driving partner Robin Liddell and their Mike Johnson-prepared No. 57 car know the way to the victory podium, having twice stood atop it here the past two races.
Living motorcycle legend Scott Russell posted a third-fast 1:39.839 (97.681 mph) to round out the top-3 GT qualifiers. Russell is joined by 2008 GT driving champ Paul Edwards in the Leighton Reese-owned, Tony Dowe-prepared No. 07 Mobil 1/Airjax.com Corvette.
The fastest Mazdas in the GT field were those of a fourth-quickest Adam Christodoulou, No. 68 MazdaSpeed RX-8, and a fifth-place James Gué’s No. 41 Global Diving/ Seattle Children’s Hospital RX-8.
“Torque, that’s what we’re missing by comparison to the faster guys up front,” Gué said after qualifying. “They’ve got the grunt to dig them out of the corners sooner. We can go as fast as they can but they get to top-end speed sooner; run there longer. That’s the difference.”
Still and even though having for the first time only seen the track Friday, Gué acquitted himself well. Teamed at Dempsey Racing with 2009 GT champion Leh Keen, the pair isn’t likely to go quietly into the night. For that matter, neither are SpeedSource drivers Christodoulou and his co-driver, John Edwards.
Noting that Russell and Christodoulou have thrice tangled in three races this season – the most recent at July’s New Jersey Motorsports Park race – any on-track friction between the pair may well light a fuse that could lead to fireworks in the pits.
OH CANADA, NOT
At least for a few regular Rolex Series teams.
Team Sahlen decided to sort its newest team transport before heading to Miller and joining a few new teams that apparently will appear there – among which are perhaps two new Daytona Prototypes – as nearly everyone now begins looking toward 2011.
SPIRIT OF DAYTONA, 2011
2009 Rolex 24 At Daytona winner Antonio Garcia and 2004 Indy 500 camp Buddy Rice are probable returnees to the Holly Hill, Florida-based No. 90 Coyote racing team for the 2011 season.
Seeing the 2010 season as a full-season prep for a championship run in 2011, the team will have a Chevrolet engine and new Coyote chassis (Pratt & Miller) with which to do so, according to sources.
INJURED RESERVE LIST
The Brumos Racing/Action Express squads are hurting – or at least are a couple of team members within.
While attempting to relocate an armchair, Bill Keuler, the No. 59 Porsche-Riley’s chief wrench, first walked, then skidded from one stair step to another, at an awkward angle shoving his leg into an immovable object.
“Like it was slow motion, I watched it happen,” Keuler said, recounting how he watched his lower left leg and foot contort and crumple.
“It wasn’t pretty and it’s one of those things that once you saw it, it became difficult to shake mentally. I’ve even seen it when I was sleeping.”
Riding a wheel chair at The Glen with a full-on plaster cast, Keuler is doing the double-crutch thing at Montreal with his lower-left leg now encased in a walking boot. He’ll be that way for at least the next four weeks as various twisted ligaments, muscles and fractured bones heal.
“I can take the boot off for showers and elevate it, and that’s a nice feeling. But I’m also trying to do a little therapy and that hurt’s like hell. But it’s nice to be able to take the boot off,” Keuler said, adding that he’ll be undertaking a lot of therapy between now and 2011.
Also heading for therapy, after some surgical intervention to put all the pieces back together again, is teammate Keith Johnson.
A native of Daytona Beach, prior to The Glen Johnson was attempting to ride a boogie board when he slipped from it and fell hard onto the hard-packed sand at water’s edge, separating his right shoulder.
Returned to its original position, Johnson, though sore, said he’d felt none the worse for wear when he again popped the shoulder out of its socket while single-arm steering one of the team’s DPs onto the team’s set-up pads at The Glen.
The Glen’s medical team reset it with a good yank, handed him an arm sling and told him to take it easy, whereupon Johnson again popped it, again while working on a DP.
Here for the Montreal 200, Johnson’s upper body is bundled like a Chinese infant in a tight swaddling cloth. Estimates are it’ll take Johnson two-to-four months to heal after surgery – a process he isn’t starting until two days after the Sept. 13 Rolex Champions Banquet presented by SunTrust.
“I want to party,” Johnson is reported to have intimated to an associate.
WATKINS GLEN LEFTOVER
Current Rolex Series Daytona Prototype championship points leader and 2008 winner Memo Rojas (with co-driver Scott Pruett in both cases) and a reporter were chatting while awaiting the same flight out of Rochester International Airport in Rochester, N.Y., following the Crown Royal 200 at The Glen.
Sitting in the front row nearest the flight’s gate, boarding was underway when Transportation and Safety Administration officers pulled Rojas aside for an extra-special pat down.
Wearing clothes that only a fit, buff athlete can (should be allowed to) wear and carrying nothing more than a ticket, one wonders the necessity of the extra security. After all, he was leaving the U.S. for Mexico; not the other way around.
Later,
DC
No comments:
Post a Comment