ROLEX 24, AFTER IT ALL

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE …

… Associated with a win, that is, such becoming Porsche’s $64 question as the Action Express Racing No. 9 Porsche V-8 freight-trained toward its improbable Rolex 24 At Daytona win.

Aware its venerable flat-six engine has been pushed as far as likely can be, Porsche has been working on a successor engine and for which (at least, as of roughly two seasons ago) it had anointed the Panamera’s new V-8 engine configuration and not its SUV Cayenne V-8 iteration – the latter being upon which the Action Express Racing’s engine is based.

Meanwhile, for darn near every minute of the Cayenne V-8’s Daytona Prototype life Porsche had undertaken a strategy taken straight from the Sgt. Shultz School of Cognition: “I know nothing; nothing!”

(Indeed, talk arising over the last six months or so that that both the Cayenne and Panamera are all but dead come the end of their respective product runs, one wonders if Porsche has plans for a power plant that will fill future racing and domestic engine bays for as long as has the flat-six.)

As the No. 9 Action Express Racing Riley-Cayenne-8 drew ever closer to its Rolex 24 win some in the DIS media center started speculating about Porsche’s prospective PR position, given the company’s past hands-off approach on the Cayenne DP engine project.

Garage lore had Texas-based engine developer Lozano Brothers Porting (Ben Lozano pictured at left with AER owner Bob Johnson, far left) at one point scrounging Cayenne junkyard engine carcasses, along with other principal parts, after Porsche unilaterally shut off the little ol’ company's access to new Porsche-dealer parts.

Worse still, Porsche later supposedly also told LBP it couldn’t even scavenge junkyards. Of course, this being the Good Ol’ USofA and, particularly, having done messed with a bunch of Texans, Porsche’s supposed "blocking" effort was about as successful as the Hindenburg’s most recent Lakehurst landing.

Yet, given its almost assuredly unbeatable historical race-win record, it wasn’t probable Porsche would turn its back on any “Porsche” win, especially at such a historic racing venue – the company’s first endurance win actually coming in the 1968 Rolex 24 (Porsche 907/8; 673 laps 2,564.13 miles; Vic Elford, Jochen Neerspach, Jo Siffert, Rolf Stommelen, Hans Herrmann – despite Elford’s drivers’ meeting tale of only two drivers back in the day).

The resultant, post-Rolex 24 Porsche PR headline: “Porsche Power Succeeds at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.”

ROBERT FRANKLIN LEITZINGER

One of racing’s best drivers may become a “gentleman farmer” now that the 2010 Rolex 24 at Daytona is history and the Rolex Series heads for its sprint-race calendar, starting with the March 5-6 Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Having the misfortune of being the odd-man-out on a another series’ team that is evolving from one generation’s ownership to the next, “Butch” Leitzinger (far right, with father Robert Leitzinger, near left) at 40 (nearly 41!) may well be largely finished with a professional racing career after a one-off Rolex 24 ride in the No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche-Riley team (with team regulars David Donohue, Darren Law and fellow Rolex 24 part-timer, Raphael Matos) - a career that saw him capture three Rolex 24 at Daytona races (1994, 1997, 1999) and a couple or three driving championships, among many other worthy racing accolades.

While in Daytona, Leitzinger said he’d long ago learned through a series of relatively short-lived but well-paying factory rides that good seats don’t last forever.

Going far beyond finding the perfect apex, however, Leitzinger’s talent also shines in his ability to quickly and affably warm to others – whether fellow race car drivers, fans or pain-in-the-rear motorsports journalists.

SPLITTING HEADACHE COSTS

Given the grass-mowing jobs seen During SPEEDtv’s Rolex 24 coverage one wonders just how many splitters “split” during the weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona – costing between $13,000 and $15,000 each, depending on manufacturer.

The splitter's cost - which some in the garages say they can independently manufacture for half that amount (some even say “30-percent,” but “that’s racing,” too) - is an example of what can happen when "markets" are limited – for whatever reason.

Easily understood are both sides of the equation Grand-Am seeks to attain because on the one hand there's a desire to control costs by correspondingly controlling part designs.

Then, there’s the want, if not the certainty of making those parts available by awarding a semi-exclusive franchise. But the few who are allowed to build those parts aren’t much worried about market-place competition and thus charge what some characterize as “hamburger diets on tenderloin prices.”

Overall weight still seems to be of the greater concern on the minds of many team managers and owners as each try somehow to bring cars down to minimum weights (2,225-2,275 lb., “depending”).

One team spent $4,000 each on three, count ‘em three 12-volt batteries of the kind most everyone else buys for around $100. Why? They weigh far less.

Another owner spent close to $20,000 ridding his car of 10 lb. You read it correctly; ten big ones! And people think the “alli” weight loss product pricey.

According to most in the garage (not including Rolex Series officials) the anti-spend answer lies in raising overall DP weight to 2,400 to 2,500 lb.; achieving such through the use of ballast.

HAVING AND HAVING NOT

At roughly the 17-hour mark many DPs started getting expected but unacceptable brake performance which required brake maintenance; most changing brake pads and very few changing the rotor and brake pads, a la the Chip Ganassi team.

Amazingly simplistic things, those quick-disconnect brake line couplings.

JUST SICK

Though plastic in the radiator intake (driving engine heat up and, eventually, leading to failure) and flat tires worked Sunday morning to rob Michael Shank Racing of yet another “sure-thing win” in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, Shank’s No. 6 Ford-Riley was already working uphill and against all odds well before the Rolex 24’s final hours when driver Michael Valiante fell ill sometime during or around his midnight-hour shift.

So lacking color that Valiante looked like a ghost wrapped in a mover’s quilt as he walked toward Shank's pits and another turn at the No. 6’s wheel - not long after the Sunday sun arose and an exhausted Brian Frisselle (right) collapsed in the Shank pits. 

Though not at the same time, both visited the Daytona International Speedway infield care center and, after licking the wounds of another biting 24 loss, will soldier on come the early March Homestead-Miami Speedway race.

HITTING A WALL

Even the best of drivers seem to forget the necessity of remembering the Laws of Physics while bringing a race car’s tires up to speed (and heat).

In an uncharacteristic move, Dion Von Moltke evidently underestimated the grip of his tires and his No. 7 Starworks BMW-Riley created a bit of mayhem, if not animosity on several fronts when his car skated from Daytona International Speedway’s pit-exit lane, across a grass strip barely worth a mower’s gasoline, glanced off a tire non-barrier – at the same time pushing a couple of stacks into the DIS 3.56-mile road course first-turn apex – and finally coming to rest with a timely but race-ending assist from the Miller-Barrett No. 48 Marquis Jet Porsche GT3.

If anyone believes Von Moltke to be on the short end of a race-driving skill set, SunTrust No. 10 driver Pedro Lamy (left) earlier was a little deeper in the pit-exit lane turn when he, too, skated but was successfully contained by the tires,  instead only rearranging his Dallara’s bodywork as he continued on – the long way around – to a much earlier-than-expected pit stop to fix that rearrangement.

(Look for an announcement shortly from Starworks on Von Moltke teaming with Bill Lester for the remainder of 2010.)

HEATING UP

Though failing to directly address the above “exit” strategy earlier in the Rolex 24 race weekend, Proto-Auto’s Jeff Hazel likely would nonetheless add exit-lane-skate accident prevention to a list of positives he says racers would realize should Grand-Am rethink and rescind its multi-year ban on tire heaters, principally undertaken with “cost savings” in mind.

Hazel’s principal point was that a preheated tire is far more likely from the outset to carry and maintain recommended tire-maker atmospheric pressure levels whereas teams now must mostly guess the levels at which to first pressurize a tire, keeping in mind that a heated tire’s internal pressure will change 15-percent or more when a variety of influences – among which are track surfaces to air humidity – act upon a tire’s self-contained atmosphere.

Yes, yes, Pirelli is supposed to “dry” the tire-pressurizing air while properly pressurizing the tire, and more, but the atmosphere’s dynamics can be considerably changed with just one tire tech’s preference of more (or less) “goop” (a highly technical term used by most to describe a substance used to help bind tire to wheel rim).

“From a safety as well as a monetary standpoint, pre-heated tires are advisable,” Hazel said in perfect English (the Queen’s version that is).

According to Hazel a variety of methods can be employed in pre-heating a tire – from relatively costly individual tire wraps to enclosed, multi-set cabinets into which hot air is introduced.

“A tire’s life is greatly extended when uniformly heated before being stressed, making it less subject to dangerous ruptures.”

Not to mention possibly keeping two cars – one being an entirely innocent bystander, as in Miller-Barrett Racing’s case - from wrecking out of a race.

From what some have learned, a few heated “tire cabinets” cost considerably less than one splitter – or one No. 7 BMW-Riley and one No. 48 Porsche GT3.

HAYWOOD GONE

Well, not entirely – Hurley H Haywood (left) still will race in “non-professional” events like HSR.

It was an emotional moment for just about everyone except Haywood during the 2010 Rolex 24’s At Daytona’s 19th hour as the five-time Rolex 24 winner stepped out of the No. 59 for the last time at the venerable 24-hour race.

"I think I got more emotional when I got in the car the first time, knowing it'd be my last," he said (you need to think on it; re-read it a couple of times, it'll sink in)(I think).

Done, over the wall and wiping his brow Sunday morning, tens of cameras were among a crush of crew, friends, business associates, TV producers, media types and hangers-on who gathered ‘round Haywood under Brumos’ suddenly too-small pit road tent.

One camera-guy type fumed indignantly when the team’s pit crew, using words like “excuse me, sir” and “pardon me, please” attempted to part the human waters while performing usual, needed post-pit stop duties in their own pit.

Then again, lunch wasn't far from being served over in the media center and with a top spot in line awaiting the camera guy was soon departed.

DRILLING IT

Tracy Krohn's W&T Offshore is in the business of drilling for petroleum so it's likely team members should be somewhat familiar with the term.

"We got drilled by (Christophe) Bouchut - who was 40-laps down - in the West Horseshoe,” exclaimed Jeff Hazel after the incident, which he pinned squarely on the 1995 Rolex 24 winner, driving the No. 55 Crown Royal Supercar Life BMW-Riley. (How Bouchut did all this and finished third, too, in still another car, I've yet to figure.)

Nevertheless, the Ford-Lola team was at the top of the boards, driver Ricardo Zonta having led a total of 30 laps when the car came in for some gas, tires and servicing on Lap 300.

Rear-ended on Lap 308 following driver Nic Jönsson’s return to the track, the No, 75 Ford-Lola lost about 15 laps replacing damaged bodywork and later dropped more time when the crew had to swap out an entire set of gears, the input shaft of which was noticeably bent.

SHORTS

Lozano Brothers Porting’s work on the Porsche-Cayenne V-8 finally paid off – even if not for the No. 90 Spirit of Daytona, which has worked longest of any team to give competitive life to the engine.

The Porsche Cayenne LBP engine has been on the Grand-Am “watch list” for a while, so don’t be surprised when it gets whacked.

Finally, Patterson Said The "L" Word. Actually, Mark Patterson (at center-right, A.J. Allmendinger, near left) wrote it: "…my last Daytona 24 Hour Rolex race," he wrote in his race diary, which evidently now goes on hiatus.

He will be missed.

SPEEDtv’s one-hour historical Rolex 24 pre-race perspective was named "the best I've ever seen" by Grand-Am's Mark Raffauf, who was instrumental in prototype racing during the 1980's-1990's.

Darn, he's getting old.

Later,

DC