FALSIES II

ROLEX 24 FALSEHOODS

MOV(e it on over)

"It Was So Much More Competitive 'In The Day'" and "Racing Was So Much More Exciting!"

Um, exactly what "day" might that be and, further, do some define "exciting" in a manner other than, say, does Webster?

The 2009, 2010 and 2011 Rolex 24 At Daytona races produced a combined margin of victory of 0:54.746 -- well under the 3.56-mile track's fastest recorded lap time, regardless of year or vehicle. Averaged, each of the three races' MOV is 0:18.25-seconds.

Given the nature of averages -- with which two or three measurements a 10-ft.-deep pond can be conveyed as something that "on paper" appears far shallower -- it's only kosher to note that the 2010 Rolex 24 At Daytona recorded the highest MOV, 0:52.303, of the three races.

Of those three races, the 2009 Rolex 24 provided the narrowest first-over-second-place gap at 0:0.167 (167-thousandths of one second).

How does one compare or describe a gap of 0.167?

In that time, an otherwise unencumbered light beam traverses a little over 50,065,340 meters or, distilled, 50,065 kilometers -- about a 20-percent greater distance than the Earth's 40,075k equatorial circumference.

A little more down to earth: at 30 mph one travels 7.35 feet in 0.167-second.

In 0.167-second at 200 mph, a car will span 48.99 feet -- or about five feet more than the distance of three nose-to-tail DP's.

First-through-fourth-places in 2009 were separated by 10.589 seconds. The funky part: the 2009 race's final caution period ran through Lap 705. The winning No. 58 Brumos Racing Porsche-Riley, with drivers David Donohue, Darren Law, Antonio Garcia and Buddy Rice, covered 735 laps. The 2009 race finished with a four-car, pedal-to-metal, 30-lap scramble for first.

After a late-race, three-lap caution, the 2011 Rolex 24 At Daytona's five up-front competitors had only a single green-flag lap in which to sort their final finishing order.

Reaching the checkered flag in fewer than two minutes, only 3.572 seconds separated the top-four finishers, at the front of which sat the No. 01 Telmex/Target BMW Riley of Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas, Joey Hand and Graham Rahal.

"It was an awesome way to finish a race," race leader and eventual winner Pruett said.

"Even though we were in the lead, I was hoping we wouldn't finish the race under yellow. The fans won in the end because they got a race that was determined by what happened on the track."

Wasn’t there another relatively recent race, say, in 2009, give or take, that finished with four-hours to go after about five hours? Something like that; officials deciding the race, too.

Meanwhile, back in Daytona: Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (con me amigo José) Sabates No. 01 Telmex/Target BMW Riley had the race in hand. With pit-road souls disposed of celebrating having already started their flow into the team's pits, Chip Ganassi wasn't at all in a similar mood. It's something he'd seen before -- celebrating before a victory had been locked up by a checkered flag -- and it usually didn't bode well.

On Lap 690 and a part of the Ganassi team for the first time, talented young British driver Justin Wilson called over his radio that while traversing the chicane something had gone wrong with the car's front suspension.

In the East Bank and rapidly closing on pit entrance, a decision was made to bring the driver and car in - straight the garage.

While the Telmex/Target car's front clip was replaced and car refueled, Pruett jumped in for the final run.

With fewer than 65 laps remaining in the race the No. 9 Action Express Racing Porsche Cayenne Riley suddenly was out front.

Two of the rookie team's four veteran drivers, Ryan Dalziel and Mike Rockenfeller, were late in joining team regulars João Barbosa and 2004 Rolex 24 champ Terry Borcheller.

For Dalziel it was a chance at getting a paid ride and such wasn't much different for Rockenfeller. Perhaps neither felt the race was theirs to win . . . until the race's last 90-minutes.

Of the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Rolex 24 At Daytona races, the 2010 race would provide the largest margin over a second-place car -- the No. 01 Telmex/Target -- but the winner's dark horse win was no less surprising than any other in recent memory.

WHAT ABOUT MAX?

"Close finishes happened all the time back in the GTP days. I can remember that Daytona race when Max Papis finished second," so goes the refrain.

Max Papis never competed at Daytona in a GTP.

In an inspired performance that has a far better, first-Daytona background story that preceded Papis' famous 1996 ride in a Gianpiero Moretti-owned Dallara 333SP (neither a misprint or miscue, ask Kevin Doran about it, sometime), a second-place Italian-driver actually named Massimiliano Papis finished 64.099 seconds short of first place after 2,481.32 miles of racing.

Other people remember it, too, and most particularly, the race winner, um, er, uh . . . now who was that guy?

Oh yes! Wayne Taylor!

(You know, the always impeccably dressed, like Warren Scheckter, head of SunTrust Racing. That is, Taylor is the head of SunTrust, not Jody Scheckter's nephew or, for that matter, Ian Scheckter's son nor, for the same matter, Tomas Scheckter's cousin. The race team; not the bank; Taylor owns the race team. David Pijot owns the bank. Right? Well, maybe not, but he's sure been there a long, long time.

("Oh, you mean the tallish, bald, sort of old guy who has reading glasses and wears golf shirts?" No, if anyone on the SunTrust team might fit that description it is Simon Hodgson, the real brains of the outfit and who wrenched Alex Zanardi and Juan Pablo Montoya to open-wheel championships. Hah-hah, just kidding, Wayne. That is, about Simon being the brains and such, after all, he really did wing the championships’ thing.

(And it's not that Simon doesn't have brains, either. It's just that he doesn't look at the world through rose-colored glasses. Which I see you've finally given up . . . for blue glasses! Nevertheless whatever makes your car race, Wayne).

"It's probably the only race, ever, that more people remember who finished second than remember who finished first," Taylor said of 1996 Rolex 24 race (said other ways in various ways at various times, some being monosyllabic, unprintable and likely quite close to what he's thinking of me this very instant).

"With two and one-half hours to go we had a four-lap cushion," Taylor, who drove the race's final 70 minutes, told a Daytona Beach News-Journal reporter about three years after "Back In The Day" actually ended with Dan Gurney's GTP team taking the cake in 1993.

"Max Papis was lapping at six seconds a lap quicker than us. We calculated that by the final lap he would be on the lead lap with us -- which he was."

"He would've passed us had I crashed the car, or pulled over and parked it, or did something really stupid, which included fighting for a lead which we securely held," Taylor recounted years later during a golf club locker-room interview, "So, I let him go 'round."

"The point was to win Daytona, not to keep some backmarker from overtaking. At that point I knew all I needed to do was keep him in sight and win the race."

And he did, well, win the race, along with co-drivers Jim Pace, Scott Sharp; Doyle Racing; Oldsmobile (ask your grandfather); and, some outfit known today as Riley Technologies.

(The '96 race's overall third-place finisher? Only 48-laps behind were drivers Jim Downing, Butch Hamlet, Tim McAdam and Barry Waddell (who IS this Waddell guy?) in a Kudzu DLM Mazda.

TIME 'GOLDENS' ALL WOUNDS

Or MOV Revisited, Reexamined

During the oft-cited, so-called “Golden Era" of "Back in The Day" prototype racing -- roughly 1985 through 1993 -- in those nine races the single closest Margin Of Victory was a 0:1:49.150 recorded in 1986 when Al Holbert, Derek Bell and Al Unser Jr's No. 14 Porsche 962 beat the No. 8 T-Bird Swap Shop 962 quartet of A.J. Foyt, Arie Luyendyk, Danny Sullivan and Preston Henn.

Second-closest MOV in that time frame was the 1989 Daytona 24, with a 0:2:06.597 MOV, in which the No. 62 Porsche 962 of Bob Wollek, Derek Bell, John Andretti and Jim Busby came in first place, followed by the No. 61 TWR Jaguar XJR-9 of Price Cobb, John Nielsen, Andy Wallace and Jan Lammers.

Three-race, consecutive close-finish comparables to that of the Rolex 24 At Daytona's 2009-2011 stretch couldn't be found in the 1985-1993 time frame. Indeed, even consecutive year-over-year tight finishes weren't to be found, the 1985-1993 first-to-second place MOV's most frequently not being measured in seconds or minutes as much as quantities of laps:

1985 - 17 laps

1987 - 8 laps

1988 - 1 lap

1990 - 4 laps

1991 - 8 laps

1992 - 9 laps

1993 - 10 laps

Yours truly chose the 1985-1993 time period as being most representative of the "The Golden Age" based on the following considerations:

In 1985, due to a westward shift of the Pedro Rodriguez International Turn ("East Horseshoe" or "Turn 3"), the track's overall road-course length decreased from 3.870 to 3.56 miles;

Porsche's 956 prototype never competed at Daytona International Speedway. A one-off Porsche 962 was introduced in the 1984 SunBank 24 for testing purposes, only, and it broke, um, was "voluntarily retired" after 127 laps (well, at least Mario Andretti claimed the race pole for the 962 with a 1:50.989). In 1985, six of the world's eight 962s at the time, started that year's SunBank 24 At Daytona;

With the conclusion of the 1993 SunBank 24, also concluded was the GTP, or Grand Touring Prototype, designation to the favor of the "World Sports Car" concept -- in simplistic terms an open-top, flat-bottom race car -- which in a collaborative effort was mandated by IMSA primarily because the GTP handwriting had been on the wall for years, the 1993 race closing out the "era" with all of eight GTPs in the field.

Should anyone care to squawk, though, IMSA's "GTP" designation was first used in 1982, when at race-end the MOV was 9 laps. In 1983, 6 laps; 1984, 9 laps.

The dawn of the World Sports Car concept, which began at Daytona in 1994, took three years to take hold before the first win, achieved by the aforementioned Wayne Taylor, Jim Pace and Scott Sharp.

In the meantime, Scott Pruett, Butch Leitzinger, Paul Gentilozzi and Steve Millen in their Nissan 300ZX GTS car won the '94 race, ushering in the WSC form of racing -- by a piddling 24 laps.

In 1995, driving a special-exception "LMWSC" Kremer K8 Porsche Spyder, Christophe Bouchut, Giovanni Lavaggi, Marco Werner and Jürgen Lässig, won with a 5-lap margin.

If a special "era" exists -- that is, a consecutive number of years having competitive racing -- it is “now.”

Later,

DC