Not in some estimations.
The unofficial skinny has it that Grand-Am is unlikely to return to New Jersey Motorsports Park in 2011 – though such isn’t at all attributable to the lack of plentiful and appreciative crowds in attendance of the Rolex Series’ NJMP races since they began in 2008.
One supposes the “surprise” factor shouldn’t be terribly high on the issue, considering the relationship didn’t exactly begin in harmonious fashion from the start after championship driver Scott Pruett impacted what many in racing characterized as a poorly located initial point in a barrier designed to provide safety to race personnel stationed along pit road.
Pruett was knocked unconscious when his No. 01 TELMEX Lexus (now BMW) Riley impacted that barrier – hastily relocated the night following the August 2008 incident – and was sent to the South Jersey Healthcare Regional Medical Center after the incident which occurred during the series’ first morning session at the 2.25-mile facility in August 2008 (more below).
Also criticized heavily in 2008 was a crest in a formerly flat-out fast section between the track’s second and third turns, “fixed” with a chicane addition by the series’ second appearance in 2009 but that before which brought some race cars perilously close to blowing over.
Adding salt to the wound, so to speak, was the track’s dry, bare terrain that year. Blamed on a lack of rain and insufficient time for growing turf, off track excursions produced billowing, vision-obscuring dust clouds. Though the track dispatched water trucks to temper the effect, Antonio Garcia, then driving for Eddie Cheever, kicked up an enormous cloud after being forced from the racing surface between Turns 1 and 2 following the 2008 race start.
Having received a green flag following that of the one thrown for the Daytona Prototypes, a gaggle of Grand Touring cars and their testosterone-pulsing drivers raced headlong into the resultant Turn 2-obscuring dust cloud and thus sent a few teams packing for homeward trips before the first lap’s completion.
It’s a never-ending cloud, according to some.
“It’s our third race here and every time a car comes down pit road the (accumulated) sand still flies all over the place, getting into everything from our gear to our eyes,” one longtime pit team member groused Thursday. “You’d think they’d have had enough time to grow some grass by now or, at the least, run a broom down pit road.”
Today, tufts of grass are seen throughout the massive facility’s wide expanses devoted to transporter, team, official, race personnel, paid VIP and fan parking, but few have joined to form anything close to a lush green carpet one would believe possible in The Garden State, as New Jersey’s self-proclaimed moniker would prefer to convey.
Further still, one team owner, who likewise was on hand for NJMP’s inaugural 2008 Rolex Series race, said that while he could understand the track at that time stood to be cut some slack, the paddock’s condition remains “substandard” still, noting that some team transporters on setup day either were directed through or were ultimately parked in inches-deep mud – a confirmation of such abounding on massive transporter tires sighted throughout the NJMP paddock Friday.
A walk around the track’s viewing areas Friday proved similar conditions abundantly existed elsewhere, with spectators often left to drive glistening six-figure cars - and themselves when walking - through or into mud-caked areas found outside the track’s non-racing asphalt surfaces.
Not immune to the wet though, but perhaps most disgustingly so was the main garage men’s bathroom and its two-and-three feet wide, um, liquid surface sheen running distinctly from front door to the bathroom’s farthest reaches. Weather, humidity and, perhaps, user sloppiness notwithstanding, a simple unsteady walk producing a skid, slip and subsequent pelvis-breaking fall could add up where a broom, mop and anti-skid flooring may have otherwise prevented – not to mention the joy in thence elsewhere conveying any nature of possible public health maladies on one’s shoes or clothing.
“Clearly there’s room for improvement,” award-winning motorsports writer Chris Economaki on Friday said of NJMP.
FEEL THE LOVE
With Philadelphia being only about 40 miles to the north of New Jersey Motorsports Park (and the above notwithstanding) one would think “brotherly love” would be in the air.
Well, if love wasn’t all around, then there was at least some acrimony on hand to keep the gossip, one upmanship and sarcasm in full play.
Things kind of got of to a good start at the Friday morning drivers’ meeting when a certain, microphone-toting series official began to point out some of the teams and drivers having rejoined the series.
“They’ve been absent a few races, some since Daytona,” the unnamed cigar-smoking official said.
Just about the time attendees expected to hear something brotherly along the lines of, “So let’s welcome them back,” instead came, “Please watch out for them when you’re on the track, they’re probably a little rusty from having not driven in so long.”
Nice.
Then there was Friday’s Grand Opening (invitation at right; barely pictured are John Potter and Craig Stanton) of Magnus East’s NJMP racing facility – complete with wine, food and activities for the kid in all of us – principally dedicated to two basic premises: raising the team’s community recognition by specifically, perhaps rhetorically asking “Who The Hell Are These Guys?” and, while in the process of opening their magnificently appointed Magnus Racing East facility – along with its “Clay Street Winery!” – tweaking a certain longstanding Porsche team likewise having likewise recently dedicated an “East” facility which clearly lacked a “bouncy house.”
2008 REVISITED
With pedal to metal as he traveled along a sweeping, high-speed right turn that passes beneath an overpass which provides two-lane New Jersey Motorsports Park paddock ingress and egress to fans and competitors alike, Pruett suddenly found himself dealing with a couple of dueling Porsches, apparently oblivious to Pruett’s presence.
"A GT car put his left-side tires off coming out of Turn 12 (at the beginning of pit straight) and threw up a huge cloud of dust," Frisselle recounted. "That spooked another GT car to his right. Then that car did a lane toss and Pruett, probably rolling into full throttle as he came out of the turn for whatever reason, just snapped; his rear end coming out from under him and he just slammed that barrier. He had just gotten perpendicular to the track surface - his rear coming around 90-degrees - when he hit (the tire-bordered metal barrier)."
"It was the hardest hit I've ever seen," said Frisselle, an IMSA championship winner in his own right and who easily has double, if not triple the number of motorsport years as most of those in any given racing paddock – years during which Frisselle owned and fielded Al Unser Jr’s first professional championship-winning race car. 
"I have never been so scared for someone in my life," Mike Shank said.
Pruett's No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley looked like a piece of half-rotten and dried wood that’d been on the wrong end of a karate kick.
Shank's been around, as a driver and as an owner. He's won honors doing both and, as a result, has seen a lot of things happen in motorsports.
According to Shank, acting as a fulcrum the metal barrier made contact just behind the driver's compartment but forward of the engine compartment, splitting the car in two, perpendicular to the car’s front-to-rear centerline.
Note that the car didn't bend; it broke.
When the driver compartment stopped (above, left) it sat partially in Doran's pit box and only a few feet away from Stevenson Motorsports' No. 57 Pontiac GTO.R - under which a mechanic was working.
"I didn't think twice about it," Doran said, "I just started hauling ass for what was left of the driver's compartment. John Maddox (Roush Yates Ford Engines' point man and former Emergency Medical Technician, to boot) was right with me."
"Scott was kind of rolling his head back and forth, like he was trying to hold it up straight but couldn't, so I reached through and held Scott's helmet with my hands on either side of his helmet."
"John, he was an EMT, was reaching inside, helping to stabilize his head and trying to assess Scott."
"Then all of a sudden the top of Pruett's car just flew off; scared shit out of me.”
It was Shank and one of his crewmen, Ralph Lohr, who between driving one of the team's haulers fuels the No. 6 MSR Ford-Riley.
Just steps away like Doran and Maddox when the wreck unfolded, Shank and Lohr were at full-tilt boogie on the way to Pruett before most had figured out anything had actually happened, much less its severity.
"We didn't really even think about it, we just reacted," Shank said. "We ripped what was left of the top off so we could get at Scott from above,"
With a straight look into Pruett's eyes, "That's when I saw them flutter, roll up into his head, and, I'm telling you, it scared the shit out of me."
“I was scared he was dead,” Doran said at the time. “The car was in pieces and he (Pruett) opened his eyes and then they just rolled back into his head.”
Battered, bruised and hurting, Pruett and co-driver Memo Rojas fielded a backup gamely retrieved from the TELMEX team’s Indianapolis-based shop As was the case then, Pruett, Rojas and the TELMEX team led the Rolex Series driving championship coming into the NJMP race, but so substantially so that the team could’ve simply withdrawn and, essentially, just start the final race of the season two weeks later at Miller Motorsports Park to claim the 2008 title.
“That’s not me,” Pruett (in his hospital jammies at left) said later that Thursday when he returned to NJMP, team manager Tim Keene only moments before saying it was Pruett’s call whether the team should pull up stakes and head home following the accident. Racing from their northern California home to be at her husband’s side, spouse Judy Pruett was in the team’s pit box when Scott Pruett gingerly climbed from and handed the TELMEX car over to Rojas, who guided an otherwise retired race car to a 9th-place finish.
Later,
DC
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