Leh Keen and Andrew Davis, driving the No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche GT3 scored their second win in three races Saturday at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, in the process posting a 10-point lead over second place in the Rolex Sports Car Series GT-driving championship.
In arrears by four championship points to the No. 88 Autohaus Chevrolet Camaro’s Bill Lester and Jordan Taylor as the series arrived on the Left Coast, Keen and Davis had a veritable Sunday drive when the Autohaus Camaro was “ticketed” for malfunctioning brake lights and sent to the pits for a repair – and a lap deficit when the dust settled. Taylor, more or less, was left to manually signal his use of brakes. Really.
One wonders the big deal. Had everyone just followed one car length for every10 mph in speed, all would’ve been well. Then again, that particular mandate is in the Florida Drivers Handbook and, perhaps owed to its lack of funds, perhaps California opted to leave it out of their counterpart so as to save some ink costs. Ink money gets big when one talks tens-of-millions of books.
Still in the championship’s top-3 is Turner Motorsports’ Paul Dalla Lana, now alone in third place after Bill Auberlen went elsewhere to race elsewhere.
Raphael Matos was tabbed to render assistance to Dalla Lana in Auberlen’s absence but a needed strong run eluded the team, whose No. 94 BMW M3 finished eighth.
The really bad news is that Auberlen, who raced at Lime Rock Park, is fourth in the ALMS’ GT championship, having about half-as-many points as does first place (Joey Hand, Dirk Mueller) in the ALMS GT championship hunt.
Dropping like a rock in the Rolex Series GT championship points – wherein the team stood in first just four races ago – in one Saturday race absence, Auberlen went from equal standing with Dalla Lana to ninth in the points.
It’s a decent bet that contractual obligations and all that goes with such (primarily: hand tying) caused Auberlen’s “no-win” scenario.
Too bad; Auberlen’s a helluva driver well worthy of gaining even more driving-championship crowns and one suspects he’s wearing a long face about now. So, too, Turner Motorsports, who also is a quality outfit.
Meanwhile, reversed are the long faces worn earlier this season by the boys in the red, white and blue No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche.
Extra credit is given for their tenacity, too.
WHAT GOES UP . . .
Falling steadily over in the Daytona Prototype championship points chase are the dual-Action Express Racing (sorry, couldn’t help myself with the hyphen’s use) cars of Darren Law and David Donohue, in the No. 5 AER Porsche-Riley, and the No. 9 AER Porsche-Riley driven by J.C. France, Terry Borcheller and Joao Barbosa.
A look at the latest Rolex Series points chart shows the teams as being among the more consistent in the series, the biggest problem being theirs is on the lower rungs of the “top-performing” teams ladder.
As unabashedly stated earlier this season by this observer, the winning of a championship by any other than one of the AER teams would be on a road on which cars would have to first pass through AER.
Donohue and Law have pretty well stayed in the standing’s fourth and fifth-place vicinity after a ninth-place Rolex 24 at Daytona season-opening start – their worst finish to date in 2011! A win would have and may yet still bolster the team in the championship fight, but it needs to come soon.
So, too, must the No. 9 AER car pick up its performance, which has gone from offering a credible fight for the championship’s top rung to slipping one below their fellow drivers’ fourth-place standing.
Scoring a win, two podiums and three top-5’s at season’s start, the No. 9 AER team has since slowly spiraled downward, posting one sixth, two sevenths and an eighth-place finish in the last four races.
And the drive-through team?
The same team which in 2005 arrived at their first Laguna Seca Daytona Prototype race with a borrowed red Shelton Ferrari hauler.
“Finally,” one journalist thought to himself, having nearly countless times seen Shelton cars at IMSA v. 1.0 races, “Ferrari has arrived!”
Nope.
Then a “Gurney” was mentioned.
“Dan?”
Nope.
“With a Ferrari Red hauler, Riley DP and shirts, okay then, what’s the deal with this Blackhawk Racing operation?”
While Jon Fogarty had yet to don a black-and-red firesuit, Alex Gurney, Bob Stallings, Terry Wilbert and the rest of the No. 99 GAINSCO team had arrived.
Stallings – largely unrecognized as having thrown the gas on a simmering DP “pro-driving-duo” fire – would soon learn he needed to replace himself with a pro (Fogarty) to drastically improve the odds.
Of course, after scoring championships in 2007, 2009 and fighting like heck for a 2010 repeat, this year fans, and even those disinclined of such, wondered, “What the heck happened to GAINSCO?”
(Oh, to be of such recognition that only two syllables are needed for speaker and listener to know of what is meant; the first to be known as simply as is GAINSCO and TELMEX today was “Red Bull,” a.k.a., the No. 59 Fabcar-Porsche of drivers David Donohue and Mike Borkowski, the latter giving way in 2004 to a former Picchio DP-driving Darren Law.)
Well, it’s about time the GAINSCO guys really showed up (coinciding with Mrs. Stallings’ return, too, BTW).
For the Red Dragon team the Grand-Am Daytona Prototype racing season didn’t exactly start well, in four races tallying only one second-place (some teams would love to have one podium; just one) along with an eighth, a 10th and 12th-place finishes.
Compiling an ordinal a 4-3-2-1 finishing streak over the last four races, “They’re ba-ack!”
But it might be too la-ate.
Nevertheless, having finally punched their way out of whatever bag had previously contained them, one just knows the team is again having fun and everything’s better when it’s fun.
VIR CANCELS AMA PRO RACE
What’s a motorcycle race story doing in Cold Pit?
Below (in part) is a 2 + 2 story, because no matter how you add it, the final tally looks to be the same.
“DAYTONA BEACH, FL (July 11, 2011) - It is with deep regret that AMA Pro Racing is forced to announce VIR's cancellation of the Suzuki White Lightening Nationals, Round 8 on the AMA Pro Road Racing season calendar. Despite AMA Pro Racing's efforts to preserve the originally scheduled August 12-14 event, VIR staff notified AMA Pro Racing late Monday, July 11, of its final decision not to host or promote the race weekend.”
Answer: A 2012 Rolex Series Race at VIR just became improbable, no matter how you add it. Think about it.
Later,
DC
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