"Remember, no matter what anyone says, Rock On!" - Shindig! host Jimmy O'Neill, circa 1966.
Excepting tangential, uh, tangents over the previous couple of days, heading into this weekend's Roar At The 24 your correspondent has been kinda, sorta following the 2009 Rolex 24 At Daytona's finishing order, using it as a base from which to wax tangentially.
"tangent (noun): a trigonometric function that is equal to the sine divided by the cosine for all real numbers θ for which the cosine is not equal to zero and is exactly equal to the tangent of an angle of measure θ in radians." - Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged
And here this writer thought "tangent" is "the angle of the dangle." Well, thank goodness Webster's cleared that whole deal up (and you just know some engineering types - Dion Von Moltke, Ricky and Jordan Taylor, come to mind - read the above and, just about the time other brains went into "tilt" mode, said, "Well, but of course! Like, really, dude.").
Speaking of the Family Taylor: Shelley still is the best looking (sorry, Wayne).
Furthermore speaking of the SunTrust Racing No. 10 Ford-Dallara …
Drivers Massimiliano Angelelli and Brian Frisselle finished third in the Rolex Sports Car Series' year-end championship driver standings after starting the championship season fourth by benefit of their fourth-place Rolex 24 at Daytona finish - a whopping 10.589-seconds behind first place.
(Still, the 2009 Rolex 24's top four-car finishing spread boggles the mind. A repeat or near repeat of such finish likely won't be seen in this scribe's lifetime.)
Joining MaxAxe Angelelli and Br. Frisselle in 2009 were Pedro Lamy and team-owner Wayne Taylor.
The above "Br. Frisselle" made necessary by yet another Frisselle, Bra(d) who either named Bu(rt)
"The Older" Frisselle and Br(ian) "The Younger" Frisselle or acquiesced when Terrye Frisselle named 'em. Actually, it all goes a bit deeper, but space, like attention spans, is limited.
By most standards, the single-car SunTrust team has a remarkable Rolex 24 record, having in its six Rolex 24 races finished four times in the top-5 and only once, in 2006, has it finished outside the top 10.
Though familiarity supposedly breeds contempt it as often as not also means success. With SunTrust duplicating its 2009 driving team, it's looking like an early favorite among those capable of winning the weeks-away Jan. 30-31 Rolex 24.
However, given that Mr. Taylor's been known to sometimes dance sans a band and dance floor, the final probabilities also await whether he marches to a different drumbeat between now and month's end.
Nevertheless, one can see and bid him adieu this weekend at Daytona International's Roar Before The 24 (also known by the less than grandiose "Test Days" moniker; hung on it years ago when Mark Raffauf was somewhere in the vicinity of the race-day controls. Hmmm, come to think of it, he's still in control of the yellow lights).
As of now, The Mark Patterson 2010 Rolex Series Farewell Tour has scheduled only one other race date, the June 5-6 Sahlen's Six Hours Of The Glen, so one should strive to quickly acquire the associated memorabilia.
Known to work hard in the off season to achieve a buff racing bod but with 10-fewer races on his schedule this year, it'll be interesting to see which Patterson shows.
Talk of Patterson merely leads us to a …
Strangely, the Count Five recorded Psychotic Reaction in 1966 and six-of-seven Ford-powered Daytona Prototypes failed in the 2009 Rolex 24 At Daytona.
Okay, so there's no obvious parallels in the above, but Ford-engine suppliers Roush Yates and point man John Maddox certainly reacted after the proverbial Original Equipment Manufacturer (relatively) cheap part gave way, dashing at least a few hopes and leaving Maddox after the race to repeatedly mumble something about "divine intervention" having worked to the favor of the No. 10 SunTrust Ford-Dallara's 4th-place finish.
After an unexpected suspension failure popped the balloon in 2008 of a Rolex 24 race-leading, dominating No. 6 Mike Shank Racing Ford-Riley (and a few other Riley DPs, too), the team was confident such wouldn't happen again after Bill Riley had his way with the recalcitrant parts.
The last to go on Lap 504 was Doran Racing's No. 77 MacDonald's Ford-Dallara, itself having one of its strongest showings in a race which team owner Kevin Doran over the decades has demonstrably loved to win.
By race end, Ford power was in four of the nine cars to have led the race but left only one to finish it.
In the face of negative news akin to the drip, drip of a Chinese water torture, one expected SunTrust's Taylor to have hung cat-like from his team's pit-box canopy but after the other failures was instead resigned, accepting the worse as inevitable but getting much better.
Shank's driving teams, in the plural, is solid by even Shank's standards, even when compared to names like Helio Castroneves, Raphael Matos and Paul Tracy - each of whom having driven a Shank car in the Rolex 24.
In the No. 6 Ford-Riley is the other MSR hotshoe, Michael Valiante - second only to Negri in his relative longevity with the team - who teams with Ricky Taylor for the remainder of the 2010 season (read "serious season-long dark horse"). Filling out the No. 6 Rolex 24 squad are Allmendinger and Patterson, the two reprise an alliance that dates to the 2006 Rolex 24 when the pair - plus Negri and Justin Wilson - finished a surprise second and gave Lexus its sole one-two Rolex 24 finish.
Finally, Tracy Krohn, Nic "Mudder" Jönsson, Ricardo Zonta and unofficial 2006 Rolex Series driving co-champ Colin Braun - who's gone on to greater fortune in NASCAR's upper-tier series - so far appear to be the only part of what in 2009 was a two-car Krohn Racing assault on North America's crown jewel of endurance racing.
One can understand why the team also ended in 2005. But, that's another story told four years ago.
Once the Ford-Lola cleared the Rolex 24's broken engines it motored in the hands of Jönsson and Zonta for 2009, posting a second win in August on The Glen's short course and a third-place between at EMCO Gears' Mid-Ohio show.
The guys were on a roll when, for legal reasons, Krohn pulled the team's plug for 2009's duration after The Glen win, just when most everyone figured Zonta and Jönsson's roll was bound to continue.
Now, still with "Lola" on the car, maybe the team can focus on its promise.
"We have about two years of development on the Proto-Auto Lola now," Jönsson said this week before heading for Daytona.
"I think that 2009 proved the car is as good as any car out there (when) we won two races and had an additional podium."
"I think we have as good of a chance to stand on top of that podium when Daytona comes around as anyone else."
The reality is that however prepared, however talented, however good a driving team may be, at the Rolex 24 everyone still is …
Later,
DC
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