When 2011 Formula 3 and Sunoco Daytona Challenge winner Filipe Nasr (pictured at right)
tested his first Daytona Prototype about a year ago at this time at Virginia International Speedway, the rap on the driver after the test was entirely positive.
Then again, it came from Grand-Am public relations . . . (grasp my drift, please, and in a practical sense; they gotta make a buck, too).
This year, with Italian Ivan Bellarosa in an Action Express Racing seat, yours truly just had to be there in person. After all, the Grand-Am boys not only were correct in their assessment of Nasr’s talent at VIR last year, the driver posted a solid, mostly surprising-to-many third place showing in the 50th Rolex 24 At Daytona.
While sharing the glory with the "Best Mostly No-Name Team" in the field – co-drivers named Michael "Malcolm" McDowell, Jorge Andrés Gonçalvez and Gustavo "El Tigrillo" Yacaman – Nasr was the only one among the four to lead the race.
Although yours truly is disinclined to pooh-pooh anyone's ability to drive a race car – such taking for more ability than many believe – the two previous Sunoco Challenge winners hadn’t been of true championship caliber and were hardly of Nasr's league.
Thus, the Sunoco Daytona Challenge had some work to do in overcoming expectations of the talent it was attracting for, well, what truly is a lifetime opportunity and, with Nasr’s “octane” level now proven, the Sunoco Daytona Challenge needed to back it up with another top-shelf driver.
Bellarosa might be accomplishing just that, according to the driver's Rolex 24 At Daytona coach, Max Papis.
Papis (pictured left, with helmet-holding Bellarosa), the reader might recall, made such a name for himself – "Mad Max" – in the 1996 Rolex 24 At Daytona’s waning hours that the event became, as Wayne Taylor once put it, "The only race ever in which a second-place finisher (Papis) is probably better known than the first-place finisher."
Taylor ought to know. He was that first-place finisher.
Of course, Papis in 2002, with Fredy Lienhard, Didier Theys and Mauro Baldi, would win his first Rolex 24 in a Lista/Doran Dallara-Judd and, as “Mad Max Papis,” became a star that easily bridged oceans of many descriptions but, to his fellow countrymen, elevated him to a stature equal to some of Italy’s most famous racing names.
“It is an honor to have met Max,” Bellarosa said. “As a boy I would dream of someday racing in America. To be coached by Max in America; to race in (the) Daytona 24 is more than a dream come true. It is indescribable.”
Papis, of course, believes he can still win another Rolex 24 title, and such accomplishment really shouldn’t surprise anyone, but Papis likely would also believe he could still win a Monaco F1 race, too.
Prior to this week the 37-year-old Italian hadn't previously even visited the United States, so Bellarosa’s English is a little rusty. Papis, as his driving coach, provided a bonus for the Action Express Racing team and this reporter alike inasmuch as Papis speaks Italian, too. Or, at least, so everyone thought when coming into this gig.
"It's amazing how much I've lost the ability to communicate racing terms in Italian," Papis said just after Bellarosa spun his car in a VIR North Course uphill turn from where Papis had chosen to coach, as well as relay, by radio, pertinent information from the pits.
"I'm man enough to accept the blame," Papis jokingly cracked in response to a reporter noticing the, um, coincidence between Papis suggesting Bellarosa loosen a sway bar position and the driver’s subsequent spin.
“Ivan was listening to me just before he spun,” Papis said. “It is something he must get used to hearing, the radio chatter.”
"Europeans don't hear a lot of radio chatter and aren't used to it," Papis said. "While Ivan (pronounced “e-VON”) will be hearing a spotter at Daytona – he will not be telling Ivan how to drive the car, of course – Ivan still must to learn to listen to the radio. So we're introducing bit by bit what Ivan will be exposed to, including the radio chatter."
Bellarosa (pictured at right, probably trying not to hear Max Papis)
was getting exposed to a lot of informational chunks, for sure, including when he was to go fast and slow.
"I will tell him that 'from an owner's view' when he's not to go through a turn too quickly, and possibly hurt the car (with an off), and when an owner won't mind him going off because he probably can't hurt it."
For his part, Bellarosa doesn't want to hurt the car, either, so he's taking it in what might be likened to baby steps: careful here; barreling ahead there.
Where he (and Max) is comfortable, it's petal to metal. Where unsure: tiptoe (How many readers remember “Tiny Tim?”).
"I feel I am at 60-percent of my ability," Bellarosa said after completing about 75-percent of his two-day VIR test.
That's 60-percent of his 100-percent ability, he clarified.
(How’d you do with the math? Need help? Get it here.)
"If I wreck the car, we do not have a second car. It will not do me any good," or, roughly translated, "I'll get no seat time whatsoever should the car be irreparably hurt."
"I did not know what to expect. The car was heavier but has more horsepower than my (SPEED) EuroSeries car, so it is quite a difference."
If the record book is any indication, Bellarosa will do well enough: In his 134 professional starts in a range of car types, the driver has scored 34 wins, 42 podiums, 20 poles and 17 fastest race laps. Put another way: If he's in a race car, it has better than a 25-percent chance of victory.
"He is really very good," Papis said, perhaps using himself as the top-rung "bar" by which Bellarosa is measured.
It's not a bad measurement at all, huh?
Later,
DC
Ivan Bellarosa images courtesy of Anders Hillenbrand
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