LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

MONTREAL (Aug 28, 2010) – Scoring their eighth 2010 Rolex Sports Car Series Daytona Prototype win Saturday at the conclusion of the Montreal 200, Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas and the Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Sabates’ No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley likewise reset the Rolex Series’ single-season race win-record mark.

Contested on the 2.7-mile Circuit Gilles Villeneuve F1 course, by winning the TELMEX team recorded the greater number of the race’s lead laps, secured only after shrewd pit strategy combined with excellent pit-crew work put second-half driver Pruett in front of Alex Gurney in Bob Stallings’ No. 99 GAINSCO Chevrolet-Riley, in which pole-sitter and co-driver Jon Fogarty earlier compiled the second-highest number of laps led at 25.

With two laps out front and the only other driver to lead the race was eventual third-place finisher Ricky Taylor, who started Wayne Taylor Racing’s No. 10 SunTrust Ford-Dallara Daytona Prototype before handing off to co-driver Max Angelelli.

A hallmark of the real estate and business industry, a smartly chosen location also proved valuable for the TELMEX team’s Montreal 200 “operations center,” giving the team a valuable edge on its competitors, according to Pruett.

Located for Montreal’s three previous races in the open air near the NASCAR Nationwide Series hauler parking area clear of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve’s F1 garages, TELMEX team manager Tim Keene this time chose to be situated in pit road’s first available pit.

“We set up there because of Grand-Am’s pit road traffic procedures,” Pruett said to a reporter Sunday morning while the two killed time in a seriously malfunctioning Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau International Airport security line.

Finishing two-seconds-and-change ahead of second place, Pruett clearly was able to drive away from and maintain a comfortable distance ahead of a hotly pursuing Gurney and his GAINSCO car – something Rojas was unable to accomplish earlier, being kept at bay by a too-wide, just-fast-enough Fogarty.

“Our first pit stop also helped because we didn’t have to subsequently take as much fuel as did the others,” Pruett added, “but our pit guys did a helluva job in getting us out front of the (No.) 99 when I took over for Memo.”

Altogether almost but not quite clinching their second Daytona Prototype driving championship in three seasons, the two TELMEX hot shoes must each additionally enter and perform admirably at the wheel of their race car during the Sept. 11 Utah 250 (hereinafter referred to as “race”) at Miller Motorsports Park (hereinafter referred to as one of three additional possible, but not absolutely, positively definite descriptions not necessarily but probably listed in order of preference: “Miller, “MMP” or, in the native Ute tongue, “Place where wind finds no human”) occurring in a locale known but usually improperly pronounced as Tooele, Utah., such driver or drivers entering and performing admirably at the wheel of their race car to occur only during a stipulated period falling between that official action defined as that action which starts the race’s official start and that official action that ends with the start of the official end, notwithstanding a driver and/or two-or-more drivers driving time having exceeded the sum total of the other driver’s driving time, vice-versa and versa-vice, thereby causing a conundrum known as the Grandfather Paradox, the use of quantum time-travel transportation notwithstanding, for which Stephen Hawking has been retained as final and ultimate arbiter and judge to unequivocally rule in the, um, matter?

Then and only then may the parties of the first part party hardy with the parties of the second hardy part, unless the party of the third part, namely Chip Ganassi, independently hardly parties at the Sept. 13 Las Vegas Rolex Awards Banquet presented by SunTrust.

Then and only then may either or all of the parties of any part kiss the trophy girl and/or girls, unless, of course . . . nah, I ain’t going there.

SCRAPPERS

Starting third and overcoming a bad-luck lap down to the field, Paul Edwards was dead set on making the most of a late race yellow that ended with about 14-minutes remaining.

Edwards and his Leighton Reese No. 07 Airjack.com/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Corvette then undertook the type of charge to the front that stirs men’s souls. Yet, little else should be expected from a racer who has all but patented the move.

In truth, a win this year by the barely funded team was still all but inevitable given the decently deep talent pool that starts at the top with scrapper Leighton Reese – a Minnesotan whose winning ways have ranged from snowmobiles to thunderous sprint cars – and has for years infused his team with a never-say-die belief that’s percolated throughout his organization.

Among that organization’s members is Tony Dowe who, some might recall, has had a life rich in the smell of warm castor oil and filled with the melodic notes of a dropped wrench onto a shop’s floor – not to mention the sheer joy of a busted knuckle here and there, too.

One of Dowe’s earliest gigs had him hooking up in the 1960’s with Morris Nunn’s kick-butt Ensign F3 program, later teaming with another Englishman and wherein shepherded into Daytona’s 1988 Rolex 24 Victory Lane was a Tom Walkinshaw Jaguar driven by Raul Boesel, Martin Brundle, Eddie Cheever, Johnny Dumfries and John Nielsen.

Joining the Rolex Series eight races deep into the 2005 season, lead team-driver Edwards that year won in only his second race and added two more wins in the seven-consecutive he contested.

Teamed with Kelly Collins and running a full Rolex Series schedule in 2006, Edwards finished third in that year’s championship and, through last season, Edwards posted championship finishes of second (2007), first (2008) and fourth (2009).

The other half of Reese’s dynamic driving duo is Motorcycle Hall of Fame member Scott Russell, who in 1995 rallied from dead last to a 40-second win by race end after a full-on, early race Turn-1, coming-off-the-tri-oval-at-speed tumble that would’ve and has demoralized scores of riders having experienced the same.

Known as “Mr. Daytona” to motorcyclists the world over, Russell earned the moniker by becoming the first rider – today one of only two – to have claimed five Daytona 200 victories in the race’s nearly 80-year history.

However good the team’s members, though, money remains that which most enables a racer’s world of going ‘round.

Standing alone and off to the side watching Montreal’s delicate post-race “Podium Hat Dance,” so tight is the team’s money flow that Dowe was awaiting word on whether Reese could cover Dowe’s cost for the Sept. 11 Utah 250 race at Miller Motorsports Park.

The team’s successful weekend started Friday when co-driver Russell qualified the car third-fastest, behind a pole record-setting Boris Said (co-driver Eric Curran; Marsh Racing’s No. 31 Whelen Corvette, which by race end faded to ninth-in-class) and Andrew Davis (co-driver Robin Liddell; Stevenson Motorsports’ No. 57 Vin Solutions Camaro GT.R on the outside pole, which by race-end banged its way to third place. Or should that be “got banged?” Oh, well, Liddell and Davis at least together have more Montreal podiums than any other driver pair).

Pulled from the car – which, um, displeased Russell, believing such to be premature – caution flags, pit and race strategies then combined to put Edwards back into contention and, ultimately, out front.

With fewer than 15 minutes remaining for the final green-flag run to race end, Edwards pulled yet another one of his “bat-outta-hell” moves out of the bag, taking the car from boring also-ran to first place and along the way passing two, count ‘em, two Stevenson Camaros in the hands of darn good, no, make that excellent shoes worn by Liddell and Ronnie Bremer (co-driver Gunter Schaldach; Stevenson Motorsports’ No. 97 Lala Camaro GT.R).

Possessed, that Edwards boy is.

Unfortunately, having departed the track for Sunday’s Indianapolis MotoGP race, Russell wasn’t around to celebrate the Montreal win.

“Taking Scott out of the car (early) was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made as a car owner,” Reese said after the race win. “Man, no lie, I almost cried, but the decision had to be made and I made it.”

Climbing from the car smiling broadly, Edwards hardly looked as though he’d done little more than take a Sunday drive.

Winning has a way of causing such.

HAPPY TRAILS?

Once again, another season draws closer to conclusion.

Once again, most everyone in the paddock are gutting it out – whether the result of a lack of money or a lack of steam – yet guided by a light found at tunnel’s end, now about two weeks away, anxiously awaiting the present season’s end . . . so as to begin work on the next season.

Still, some are left wondering, “What happened!?”

“I have never, in all of my racing life, gone through such a season as that I experienced this year,” Bill Lester at Montreal said of his 2010 Rolex Series “thrash” during which his No. 7 Starworks BMW-Riley went through front splitters as does a newborn through diapers.

“We went through 7-8 splitters,” Lester said.

Count ‘em; at roughly $15,000 a pop, well, you get the idea.

That’s why Starworks owner Peter Baron at one point was reduced to wandering around the Watkins Glen (2) paddock the evening before the Crown Royal 200 at The Glen, wearing something on his face that was somewhere between a daze and vacant stare into nothingness, all the while hoping to reconcile how he might somehow finagle yet another splitter.

As the sun faded from a paddock already nearly emptied of teams headed for partying, Baron finally decided that if the hotshot drivers would commit to replacing whatever parts they break from that point, forward, then Baron would acquire the team’s 14^th splitter.

“They didn’t go for it,” Baron said.

“Big surprise there,” Lester laughingly said at Montreal, where he could do little more than provide moral support to those on the Starworks’ team.

“They’re talented, very talented but those guys think nothing of tearing up something then just replacing it,” Lester said. “They don’t understand, maybe just don’t comprehend that this isn’t an F1 paddock and that Starworks is on a tight budget.”

“So, when they went into their ‘but eet’s so cheep’ routine I started suggesting that they pay for it if it’s so doggone cheap. For some reason, it never worked.”

“Look, I understand that people make mistakes, accidents happen. Been there; done that. But 7-8 splitters!? That isn’t an accident, that’s a serial splitter killer on the loose.”

According to Baron, the irony of it all is that he’d put some pad room in the budget expecting Lester to emerge as the most likely cause of helping the Riley Technologies’ parts-shop employees feed the kids (who some believed to be named Bill, Bill and Bill . . . “Riley,” that is).

“So I bring in a bunch of pro drivers and what do they do?” Baron asked rhetorically.

Fast-forward to Montreal and Baron’s ardently wishing to “score one” for the Gip . . . uh, Ryan Dalziel.

Then a ring and pinion gear fails, taking the car out.

“I actually dreamed about that last night,” Starworks team engineer and car-constructor extraordinaire Bill Riley said Sunday morning, long after he and a certain reporter – now just beginning an eight-hour wait for the next flight back to the Good Ol’ USA – had cleared a seriously malfunctioning Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau International Airport security gauntlet, staffed by people whose favorite expression was “Up your nose with a rubber hose,” expressed in their favorite “romance” language of choice, of course.

One supposes they hadn’t yet invested in a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

Well, back to a reflective, if not dejected Bill Riley.

“I’ve played that over and over in my head,” Riley said.

When drivers Mike Forest, Dalziel and the Starworks No. 8 BMW-Riley team started packing it in after only eight of the race’s 62 laps, one can commiserate with owner Baron who after Montreal said, “I’ll see you at Miller (Motorsports Park) if I don’t slit my wrists, first.”

Later,

DC

MONTREAL (AUG. 28, 2010) –

 

Peter Baron’s Starworks No. 8 BMW-Riley with Ryan Dalziel at the wheel was atop the Rolex Series’ full-fledged final practice before co-driver Mike Forest took the car out for qualifying, in which he placed eighth.

Baron earlier in the day expressed his desire to “just let it all hang out” in an effort to nail down “at least one victory” this year “for (driver) Ryan” – that “one” victory pertaining to Dalziel’s driving with Starworks, for which he wasn’t driving when the fast Scotsman won this year’s Rolex 24.

As of now, breathing down Dalziel’s neck just four points behind are SunTrust’s Max Angelelli and Ricky Taylor, who on-balance have finished more 2010 races in sixth-or-worse than not.

Having an apparent handle on the 2.7-mile (4.4 km), 14-turn* Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, The SunTrust team has two wins in the previous three Montreal races: Max Angelelli winning with Jan Magnussen in 2007 (Pontiac-Riley) and again in 2009 with Brian Frisselle (Ford-Dallara).

Grand-Am says the track has “15” turns; the track guys see it as “14” while Canada’s The Globe And Mail newspaper counts “12.” The sum total average = 13.666. . .

TAKING FLIGHT

In a first, Alex Gurney drove his father’s (Dan Gurney, in case someone out there missed something, somewhere along the line) 1967 Brands Hatch-winning All American Racers’ F1 Eagle-Weslake (T1G 102; V-12) at the recent Rolex Reunion held at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway.

Asked for his first thoughts about his driving experience, Alex Gurney said:

“The first thing that comes to my mind is that it was soft. A lot of travel in the suspension, but it wasn’t as much as had been expected, actually. The engine, though, it sounded really good.”

With the Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Sabates TELMEX team looking for their eighth 20110 win and threatening to reset the Rolex Series’ single-season Daytona Prototype win record of seven races set in 2007 by Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty’s GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley, one is reminded of Dan Gurney’s All American Racing’s early-90’s win streak (which actually may be too mild of a description).

During the1992 and 1993 seasons Dan Gurney’s All American Racing Toyota Eagle GTP ran the table, picking up 17 consecutive GTP victories – among which were two Mobil 1 Sebring 12-hour races and a Rolex 24 – in the course of which were collected two driving crowns for Juan Manuel Fangio II and coincident manufacturer trophies for AAR.

Meanwhile, back at Montreal, Fogarty extended his all-time record as the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series Daytona Prototype pole leader to 16, setting a new track record in the process. Fogarty drove his No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley in qualifying for Saturday’s Montreal 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – a two-hour sprint race – that is to be broadcast live today on SPEED at 2 p.m. EDT..

Breaking his year-old Montreal qualifying record of 1:32.235 (105.734 mph), Fogarty topped the boards three different times on the way to his final 1:31.524 (106.556 mph) record.

“The most important thing today was to make sure the brakes and tires were working together, getting each to their proper temperatures,” Fogarty said afterward of his and the GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing team’s second-straight pole of the 2010 season.

“When the brakes and tires felt like they were properly meshing I’d go for a flyer, then cool ‘em down and set up another flyer and repeated the process a final time as the session ended.”

Next to Fogarty is points leader Memo Rojas, who put up a 1:31.839 (106.190 mph) in the No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley he shares with co-driver and points co-leader Scott Pruett.

“I don’t think I could’ve driven the course any better,” Rojas said. “They (the No. 99) have a very good car and it is smooth. They’ll be tough to beat.”

On the verge of setting a new Rolex Series single-season win record, Rojas and Pruett have won seven of 10 races thus far contested and aren’t slowing down.

In reality, the blue-and-white clad TELMEX pair has such a substantial championship-standings lead (302 to second-place Ryan Dalziel’s 276) that Rojas and Pruett likely needn’t even crank the car for the season’s final two races, of which Montreal is one. Yet, it’s clear they want another win and the record that goes with it.

“We don’t have anything to lose,” Rojas said in sentiments echoed by Pruett.

“I do not come to a race to run for anything less than what I can possibly achieve,” Pruett said. “I show up at a track with the intention of winning. Sometimes things happen where that doesn’t happen, but I don’t go into a race thinking it will. We want another first and we want the record (wins).”

Qualifying on the second row was a third-fast Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 SunTrust Ford-Dallara (1:32.123 @ 105.863 mph).

In the three races run here beginning in 2007, the SunTrust team has twice won (2007, 2009), splitting them with a sixth-place finish in 2008. The team has competed here using two different chassis (Riley, Dallara), two different engines (Pontiac, Ford) and five drivers: Jan Magnussen (2007), Michael Valiante (2008), Brian Frisselle (2009), Ricky Taylor (2010) and the one constant, Max Angelelli 2007-2010). Magnussen and Angelelli combined in 2007 to set the race’s record-high 85 lead laps.

Taylor and the SunTrust car will be joined on the second row by Burt Frisselle, who is driving the Canadian-based AIM Autosport No. 61 Pacific Mobile/Bio Sign Ford-Riley. Current co-driver Mark Wilkins teamed with Frisselle’s younger brother, Brian, to win in a pucker-up finish in 2008.

Brian Frisselle has as many wins (2008, 2009) in Montreal as does Angelelli and likewise accomplished such in as many different chassis (Riley, Dallara).

Wilkins closed the 2008 AIM win using the oldest Riley DP chassis, which again serves as the pair’s mount for today’s race.

LALLY OUT OF GT TITLE HUNT

Having started 2010 with a podium finish in the Rolex 24 At Daytona and since posting only a single finish (15^th @ Barber) outside of the top 10 this season, Andy Lally has been doing all that he can to remain a contender for the Rolex Series’ GT driving championship hunt.

Driving for a variety of GT teams (four) who likewise provided a variety of equipment, Lally posted three firsts among his nine top-10 finishes in the driver’s determined quest to wrest a Rolex Series Grand Touring championship using whatever available means.

Though Lally thus far tops the GT driving field with the greatest number (3) of 2010 wins, a 10^th-place New Jersey Motorsports Park finish and a ninth-place at The Glen soon thereafter put the driver on a down-trending slippery slope that led to his present fourth-place points spot, just one point behind a third-place Jonathan Bomarito and two-points ahead of a hard-charging James Gué and Leh Keen, who are coming off a Crown Royal 200 win at The Glen.

Added to Lally’s three Grand-Am championships and record 64 podium appearances, his nabbing a championship by undertaking such extraordinary measures would’ve alone been a worthy record accomplishment.

Alas, evidently throwing in the towel, Lally’s not even at Montreal.

But Boris Said is here, and in record fashion.

His third time this season in the Marsh Racing’s No. 31 Whelen Engineering Corvette, Said and Andrew Davis, in the Stevenson Motorsports’ No. 57 Vin Solutions Camaro, engaged in a session-long seesaw battle for today’s Grand Touring pole over the 2.7-mile (4.4 km) Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Crediting “awesome brakes,” Said posted a 1:38.895 lap, averaging 98.614 mph, as compared to Davis’ 1:38.934 (98.575 mph).

“You have to brake really deep and hard here,” Davis said, “But you just as quickly have got to come off the brakes and roll into the gas because this is such a momentum track.”

Like a dog with ears laid back, rear wings on the cars here are close to flat so as to take advantage of the track’s high speed sections, according to Davis.

“That means braking is critical,” he said. “The problem is you also have to use them wisely enough so that you’ve got plenty left at the end of the race, too.”

Davis, driving partner Robin Liddell and their Mike Johnson-prepared No. 57 car know the way to the victory podium, having twice stood atop it here the past two races.

Living motorcycle legend Scott Russell posted a third-fast 1:39.839 (97.681 mph) to round out the top-3 GT qualifiers. Russell is joined by 2008 GT driving champ Paul Edwards in the Leighton Reese-owned, Tony Dowe-prepared No. 07 Mobil 1/Airjax.com Corvette.

The fastest Mazdas in the GT field were those of a fourth-quickest Adam Christodoulou, No. 68 MazdaSpeed RX-8, and a fifth-place James Gué’s No. 41 Global Diving/ Seattle Children’s Hospital RX-8.

“Torque, that’s what we’re missing by comparison to the faster guys up front,” Gué said after qualifying. “They’ve got the grunt to dig them out of the corners sooner. We can go as fast as they can but they get to top-end speed sooner; run there longer. That’s the difference.”

Still and even though having for the first time only seen the track Friday, Gué acquitted himself well. Teamed at Dempsey Racing with 2009 GT champion Leh Keen, the pair isn’t likely to go quietly into the night. For that matter, neither are SpeedSource drivers Christodoulou and his co-driver, John Edwards.

Noting that Russell and Christodoulou have thrice tangled in three races this season – the most recent at July’s New Jersey Motorsports Park race – any on-track friction between the pair may well light a fuse that could lead to fireworks in the pits.

OH CANADA, NOT

At least for a few regular Rolex Series teams.

Team Sahlen decided to sort its newest team transport before heading to Miller and joining a few new teams that apparently will appear there – among which are perhaps two new Daytona Prototypes – as nearly everyone now begins looking toward 2011.

SPIRIT OF DAYTONA, 2011

2009 Rolex 24 At Daytona winner Antonio Garcia and 2004 Indy 500 camp Buddy Rice are probable returnees to the Holly Hill, Florida-based No. 90 Coyote racing team for the 2011 season.

Seeing the 2010 season as a full-season prep for a championship run in 2011, the team will have a Chevrolet engine and new Coyote chassis (Pratt & Miller) with which to do so, according to sources.

INJURED RESERVE LIST

The Brumos Racing/Action Express squads are hurting – or at least are a couple of team members within.

While attempting to relocate an armchair, Bill Keuler, the No. 59 Porsche-Riley’s chief wrench, first walked, then skidded from one stair step to another, at an awkward angle shoving his leg into an immovable object.

“Like it was slow motion, I watched it happen,” Keuler said, recounting how he watched his lower left leg and foot contort and crumple.

“It wasn’t pretty and it’s one of those things that once you saw it, it became difficult to shake mentally. I’ve even seen it when I was sleeping.”

Riding a wheel chair at The Glen with a full-on plaster cast, Keuler is doing the double-crutch thing at Montreal with his lower-left leg now encased in a walking boot. He’ll be that way for at least the next four weeks as various twisted ligaments, muscles and fractured bones heal.

“I can take the boot off for showers and elevate it, and that’s a nice feeling. But I’m also trying to do a little therapy and that hurt’s like hell. But it’s nice to be able to take the boot off,” Keuler said, adding that he’ll be undertaking a lot of therapy between now and 2011.

Also heading for therapy, after some surgical intervention to put all the pieces back together again, is teammate Keith Johnson.

A native of Daytona Beach, prior to The Glen Johnson was attempting to ride a boogie board when he slipped from it and fell hard onto the hard-packed sand at water’s edge, separating his right shoulder.

Returned to its original position, Johnson, though sore, said he’d felt none the worse for wear when he again popped the shoulder out of its socket while single-arm steering one of the team’s DPs onto the team’s set-up pads at The Glen.

The Glen’s medical team reset it with a good yank, handed him an arm sling and told him to take it easy, whereupon Johnson again popped it, again while working on a DP.

Here for the Montreal 200, Johnson’s upper body is bundled like a Chinese infant in a tight swaddling cloth. Estimates are it’ll take Johnson two-to-four months to heal after surgery – a process he isn’t starting until two days after the Sept. 13 Rolex Champions Banquet presented by SunTrust.

“I want to party,” Johnson is reported to have intimated to an associate.

WATKINS GLEN LEFTOVER

Current Rolex Series Daytona Prototype championship points leader and 2008 winner Memo Rojas (with co-driver Scott Pruett in both cases) and a reporter were chatting while awaiting the same flight out of Rochester International Airport in Rochester, N.Y., following the Crown Royal 200 at The Glen.

Sitting in the front row nearest the flight’s gate, boarding was underway when Transportation and Safety Administration officers pulled Rojas aside for an extra-special pat down.

Wearing clothes that only a fit, buff athlete can (should be allowed to) wear and carrying nothing more than a ticket, one wonders the necessity of the extra security. After all, he was leaving the U.S. for Mexico; not the other way around.

Later,

DC

SPANNING THE GLOBE

 

Remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports?

WWoS was a dedicated undedicated (think about it) sports program bringing its viewers “. . . the constant variety of sport . . .” that for most of its 37 years was a weekend network TV sports staple. Started in 1961, WWoS ended – at least insofar as “regularly scheduled” is concerned – in early 1998 when late broadcaster Jim McKay, the voice and face most singularly associated with WWoS, publicly announced its demise.

Having been primarily focused on radio since being spun off from NBC in the late 1940’s, upstart television network American Broadcasting Company had achieved particular appeal among young, hip urbanites who in part were enthralled with its early 1960’s primetime hits The Flintstones and The Jetsons (both in “color,” no less); WWoS becoming a part of ABC’s cutting edge mentality.

A big part of a television-viewing, which in the U.S. at the time had all of three commercial-broadcast nationwide networks (you being far too young to remember, Lucy, there really was a time when non-existent were 1,593 cable channels from which to choose), WWoS opened millions of U.S. viewer eyes, albeit usually delayed, to previously unknown sports that ran the gamut from Middle East Arabian horseracing to a curious southern-U.S. form of motorsports known as the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

Now, who doesn’t remember WWoS show’s intro? You know, the one where the ski-jump guy (Vinko Bogataj in March 21, 1970) was the first to broadcast the viewing public’s peculiar fascination – as each America’s Funniest Home Videos episode attests – with males (and, possibly, at least some hermaphrodites and no, Smallwood, were not talking “Greek Goddess”) taking a hit where polls clearly and unanimously show males least prefer getting, um, nailed. (If the reader has no clue, there will be a point in life when it’ll hit, figuratively or literally – or one could just tune in AFHV).

The above is recounted because it’s pretty doggone close to what this writer must do each day.

No, not that.

In sort of a personal modern WWoS, laboriously mined each day are hundreds of Web pages for motorsports racing tidbits. And the World Wide Web usually fails to disappoint, providing a wonderful trove (no, “treasure” needn’t necessarily precede) of well known mainstream or odd niche facts that sometimes are less-than-fully accurate or, unfortunately, sometimes downright intentionally distorted information “taken out of context” and, at times without being questioned, cleanly fitting the mind of the writer, viewer or a “choir resident.”

And so it was recently when yours truly encountered a crudely written anti-Milka Duno strike in an overall larger diatribe that best could be described as uncomplimentary of the Rolex Series and, particularly, its Daytona Prototypes and, even more particularly, those drivers – all of those drivers – found therein, furthermore citing Duno’s 2004 “win” in the series as being a particularly emblematic of all Grand-Am drivers’ total worthlessness while singling another particular North American sports car series as being significantly superior.

One could spend a lot of time pointing out each Rolex Series Daytona Prototype driver’s background, driving records, lineage and/or pedigree but, choosing minimalism, let’s instead briefly examine just two who have participated in the Rolex Series – leading off with Duno, herownself.

To Be Precise, Duno Won Three Races In 2004

In what was only that season’s second race coinciding with her second-only Daytona Prototype race, Duno’s first DP win came February 28, 2004, at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Her second DP win that year, on Sept. 12, 2004, also came at HMS in what is graciously described as one of the most hellaciously hot Rolex Series races ever conducted.

(Phoenix International Raceway’s May 2006 race was pretty doggone hot, but at 115 degrees it was a “dry” hot and one which left a person no clue he was dehydrating until administered were intravenous fluids. At HMS’ Sept. 2004 race, downing water bottle after water bottle, one could watch it simultaneously pour from the consuming body as did water from an animated cartoon character’s bullet-riddled body.)

In that 2004 season, only three Rolex Series drivers exceeded Duno in Daytona Prototype wins: Scott Pruett, Max Papis and Wayne Taylor. Eventual 2004 series DP driving champs Pruett and Papis, in the No. 01 CompUSA Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (and, yes, even back then; y José) Sabates Lexus-Riley, scored four wins; Taylor, in an assuredly meaner-looking black No. 10 SunTrust Pontiac-Riley, scored three wins. At the end of the 2004 Rolex Series season Duno would record her highest championship points-finish, fifth, in that series.

Oh, and Duno’s third-and-final 2004 race win? It was scored Sept. 25 in an Intersport Racing Lola B2K/40 Judd in the 675LMP class at Petit Le Mans which, according to most observers, wasn’t on the Grand-Am schedule. But, maybe those who think highly of ALMS don’t think quite as highly of a class victory within that series, the implication being “class” drivers aren’t nearly as skilled as “overall.”

In what the anti-Duno types likely also consider an “inconsequential” record – especially given the rarity with which it is cited – in 2001 Duno won four races and placed second in ALMS LMP675 points driving a Dick Barbour Reynard 01Q/Judd, besting 14 other drivers in the season-ending championship standings and among whom were Scott Maxwell (8^th) and Andrew Davis (11^th).

In 2007, in a career-best Rolex 24 finished second in Peter Baron’s No. 2 CITGO Pontiac-Riley, less than a lap behind winners Pruett, Salvador Duran and Juan Pablo Montoya.

Meanwhile, At Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course

More recently, Duno competed at the Aug. 8 Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course’s Honda Indy 200 and finished a relatively dismal 23^rd after starting 27^th but at least was in front of Jay Howard (24^th), Takuma Sato (25), EJ Viso (26) and Justin Wilson (27). For the sake of prospective interest, the race’s only other female driver, Danica Patrick, finished in 21^st (starting 22^nd), two spots in front of Duno.

The Mid-O IRL IndyCar Series race had 15 caution laps of the 85 total recorded by Target Chip Ganassi’s Dario Franchitti, who won. In it Duno completed 81 laps at an average of 95.228 mph even though undertaking seven (count ‘em, 7) pit stops (compare to Franchitti’s three), no doubt some or all coming during the five cautions’ 15 laps. The race field’s overall average speed came in a tick over 100 mph.

In 3 ½ IndyCar Series seasons, Duno has finished no higher than 8^th place.

Coincidentally, after climbing various racing-career ladders in their respective home countries, in 2000 Duno and Patrick started their “big league” racing-career phases on foreign soil – Patrick in Europe and Duno in the United States.

Which Brings Us To Driver No. 2, Danica Patrick

In an aggressive schedule that had her running five races in fewer than 30 days, Patrick’s first race in the British Racing & Sports Car Club Formula Ford Zetec race at Brand Hatch in England (April 10, 2000), in which her Andy Welch Racing Mygale SJ00/Ford failed to finish. Outside of three top fives and among her four top 10’s in 18 BRSCC Formula Ford finishes compiled over little more than a year’s time, Patrick’s run there wasn’t exactly spectacular – although she’d credit the experience with a necessary emotional toughening that would later cite as useful .

Returning to U.S. racing in 2002, Patrick scored a third-place in Long Beach’s annual Toyota celebrity race and then headed for a relatively short Barber Dodge Pro race stint that bore no podiums but started a path of recognition – such as being named the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Association’s 2002 Gorsline Scholarship recipient – that opened the door to higher-profile racing roles.

Competing in the CART (later, Champ Car World Series) Toyota Atlantic championship under the auspices of Bobby Rahal, in 2003 Patrick soon started putting together preceding racing years’ jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Resoundingly signaling her arrival by opening with a third-place finish at Monterrey, Mexico’s Parque Fundidora, over the following 2003 and 2004 Toyota Atlantic seasons Patrick would claim one pole (Portland International, 2004) and five podiums – but still lacked a race win.

Also competing in the same 2003 Monterrey, Mexico, Toyota Atlantic race, Michael Valiante, now with Mike Shank, claimed the Monterrey race among his three 2003 wins and later finished third in the 2003 Toyota Atlantic championship. Eventual 2003 Toyota Atlantic championship runner-up Ryan Dalziel, now with Peter Baron’s Starworks, finished fourth, winning two later races in a 2003 Toyota Atlantic championship that eventual Richard Petty Motorsports driver A.J. Allmendinger won. GAINSCO’s Jon Fogarty is the 2004 CCWS TA champion.

In the IndyCar Series, Patrick in 2008 posted an emotional first win at Japan’s Twin Ring Motegi but in more than 40 IRL races since has scored eight top-5s. In 2010 Patrick posted three top-10, including a second at Texas, but leaving one to wonder if her lack of another win is attributable to her forward-think (NASCAR?); Andretti’s inability to field a car worthy of the talent or Patrick’s skill set.

Now in her sixth season of IndyCar Series competition, Patrick as of Aug. 8, 2010, has claimed six podiums; three poles – all in her first season – and one win that came at Honda’s favorite race track.

Meanwhile At Michigan International Speedway

In the Aug. 14^th NASCAR Nationwide Series’ Carfax 250, Danica Patrick drove JR Motorsports’ No. 7 Hot Wheels/GoDaddy.com Chevrolet to a 27^th-place finish after starting 33^rd. A lap down after 21 laps into the 125-lap Michigan International Speedway race, by her 40^th lap Patrick was three laps down and ultimately finished four laps down to eventual race-winner Brad Keselowski’s Penske Racing No. 22 Discount Tire Dodge.

Patrick bested notables like Michael McDowell (28^th), Kenny Wallace (29^th), Ryan Newman (36^th) and Kevin Lepage (42^nd), among others. In six 2010 Nationwide races Patrick has two DNF’s and no top 10s.

In sportscar racing Patrick has competed in two Rolex 24s at Daytona: the 2009 Rolex 24 At Daytona in which Patrick finished 8^th and in the 2006 version, at the end of which she finished 50^th.

After the IndyCar Series’ most recent Mid-Ohio race, Patrick is 11^th in the series points. At 24^th in points, Duno clearly isn’t. However, she is there.

And Therein Lies The Difference

Some reading this will have seen the above as a defense of Duno or perhaps, even though stated otherwise, an “attack” on Patrick.

It is neither.

Rather, it is the recognition of three things:

1) Deriding one person’s sportscar victory cheapens the contributions made by her co-drivers:

Andy Wallace, who co-drive with Duno in her two 2004 Rolex Series win in a CITGO-sponsored Crawford (DP03 no. 01) has won more than 25 International Sports car races, among which are victories in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, 24 Heures Du Mans and Mobil 1 12-hours of Sebring. Wallace has driven and won races (nearly 30 times) in cars fielded by Tom Walkinshaw, Dan Gurney, Rob Dyson, Max Crawford and others. With Duno in that 2004 Petite Le Mans-winning Intersport car were Clint Field and “The Mad Scotsman” Robin Liddell.

2) Duno at the very least, albeit slow by some standards, is racing at speeds that eclipse whatever this writer and the vast majority of her critics have regularly done in any type of car.

“Oh, but I’ve done 95 mph a lot of times!” Yeah? Just how many times and where? On a veritable straight line called “Interstate” or a straight section of a two-lane country road? It is one thing to think one “averages” a given speed on Interstate and quite another to actually average that speed on a 2.3-mile track having 13 turns and considered one of the most technical in racing that includes off-camber pavement angles, esses and a 180-degree turn. Or go petal-to-metal on tracks like Daytona International Speedway on which every race car routinely and suddenly undertakes unplanned lane tosses nearly every lap.

(By the way, the next time you take a few-hundred-miles trip it might surprise you to learn that an average speed and occasionally hitting that speed are widely different matters. On your next trip of any length, even to work, record the total distance covered and the total elapsed time expended in covering it, including “pit stops.” Divide the former by the latter and you’ll learn your average MPH wasn’t as high as you probably believed. Yours truly learned that lesson when he once drove a new Chevy SS 396 roundtrip from Florida to Tennessee and learned his “65 mph average” really wasn’t . . . by far. If higher-level mathematics leaves you wishing you had Grand-Am timing-and-scoring genius Don Abbott in your corner, go here for three different ways to calculate time, distance and speed).

3) Duno, Patrick, Sarah Fisher and, before them, Desiré Wilson, Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, Patty Moise and many more, had guts, drive and sheer determination having a magnitude which many race-watchers can only dream – or lack comprehension of the required effort.

A question concerning a driver’s competency and whether he or she is allowed to compete in any given series is determined only by the sanctioning body of that series and not by fellow competitors who, at most, have three basic options: focus on first getting to checkered flag; bellyache privately or publicly; or, race somewhere else.

If nothing else, Duno brought a sponsor to the any of the series in which she has competed. That sponsor’s money not only allowed Duno to occupy a seat but created jobs: from the people who supplied the raw materials going into her racing car’s parts to the team manager sitting atop the pit box and, perhaps, photographers, writers and still others – along with accompanying overhead roofs, clothing and food in the refrigerators for the families of each.

In another vane, Duno often made possible those 18-car-minimum grids promised by the Indy Racing League to race promoters and broadcasters. Put another way: Duno helped keep the IRL alive (or, from another standpoint, helped bury the Champ Car World Series).

Usually seen as unpalatable the suggestion of abrogated free thought, expression or will – that is, a challenge of a person being disposed of and exercising self-determination in thinking, work or pleasurable activities – why is it then okay to damn another who only seeks to fulfill self-determination and is playing by the rules while engaging it? Such exactly is as Duno is undertaking: she’s chosen a path; she’s following it.

So, too, has Danica Patrick.

Isn’t that what the U.S. is supposed to be about?

LASTLY: Compare Duno to, say, fellow Venezuelan Hugo Chavez. Who would you rather have hanging around pit road on race day?

Later,

DC

DONOHUE, A REQUIEM

 

“When I'm ahead, and everything is working properly, it's like living in another world . . . I'm going very fast, there's a lot of noise from the engine, and I can feel the cornering and accelerating forces as if I were the car . . . I just seem to be part of a well-oiled machine. That's the sensation that's so thrilling to me – knowing that everything in the system is working exactly as it's supposed to. And the longer I'm away from that, the harder it is to understand or describe it. Most people who have never been in that position will never understand it.” - The Unfair Advantage, Mark Donohue

Quick: Name the last so-called road-course “ringer” to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, under whatever name (Winston, Nextel, etc.) such may have been conducted?

Mark Donohue won at Riverside International Raceway in Riverside, Calif., in the first race of the 1973 NSCS season, during which Daytona International Speedway hosted the schedule’s second race.

Donohue drove the No. 16 Roger Penske-owned American Motors Company Matador to an in-your-face, 138 leading-lap victory (of 191 laps) at a now gone 2.62-mile race track swallowed by Southern California’s population growth.

Spending just 12-minutes shy of five hours in the Matador and covering 500.4 miles, Donohue averaged 104.055 mph in a race having just three full-course cautions lasting a combined 10 laps.

Bobby Allison finished second, one lap down to Donohue.

On Aug. 17, 1975, borne from of a sense of loyalty to Penske nearly two years after he retired then un-retired after the end of the 1973 Can-Am season, Donohue was in Austria for F1’s Austrian Grand Prix at the defunct Österreichring (“Austria arena” or “Austria course”).

About 30 minutes into a 45-minute “special practice” the morning of the F1 race, Donohue’s relatively new March 751 5/Ford Cosworth, which replaced an ill-handling Penske PC-1, took leave of the high-speed, right-hand sweeper named Hella Licht (for German light manufacturer Hella), struck multiple layers of too-narrowly spaced catch fencing which, when successively pressed one into another, became more a launch ramp than speed retarder.

Donohue’s March then carried into nearby turn-perimeter signboards, the driver’s helmet striking a supporting metal upright of one.

The oft-used “head injury” summation of Donohue’s death conjures gruesome images which belie an otherwise apparently uninjured driver that in the accident’s aftermath was alert and conversing with fellow racers Emerson Fittipaldi, Hans Stuck and Mario Andretti.

Soon, though, a headache grew unbearable and Donohue asked for spouse Eden Donohue, who joined him before he was airlifted (no room for Eden; she and Karl Kainhofer used ground transportation) to a Graz, Austria hospital where even a noted neurosurgeon, Fritz Heppner, couldn’t stem the tide which led to the driver’s death two days later on Aug. 19, 1975, at age 38.

Five months shy of his ninth birthday, little David Donohue was oblivious to Penske rushing from a Talladega NASCAR race to Austria or the gravity of his paternal grandfather, Mark Donohue Sr., and maternal grandmother, Carmen White, unexpectedly likewise leaving for Austria – after all, his father had been seriously injured before and recovered.

It’d take years for David Donohue to fully grasp his father’s death, if not the emptiness left behind.

It’d also take a perhaps greater-than-expected effort to fill the racing shoes Mark Donohue left behind, but David Donohue would eventually learn he, too, was most comfortable when “part of a well-oiled machine.”

Although his father in Unfair Advantage wrote of most people’s inability to understand what it was like to become one with a race car, likewise do most people fail to understand what it takes to win a high-level racing championship or, even, a unique race like the Rolex 24 At Daytona, which David Donohue won in 2009 while co-driving a Brumos Racing Porsche-Riley with Darren Law, Buddy Rice and Antonio Garcia.

Donohue had won the 2009 Rolex 24 race pole in record form, covering the 3.56-mile course in 1 minute, 40.540 seconds at an average speed 127.472 mph.

By race end, still more records would fall in a race which went the final hour under the green flag.

- At the wheel for the race’s final segment, Donohue’s winning margin over Juan Pablo Montoya was 0.167 seconds – the closest 1-2 finish in Rolex 24 history.

- Donohue’s total margin of victory – 10.589 seconds – over second- through fourth was also the closest in Rolex 24 history.

- The 52 car-lead changes in the Rolex 24 were second only to the 64 of the 2008 Rolex 24.

- While Donohue and team’s 735 laps set a new record for most completed by a Daytona Prototype in a single race, the team also set the fourth-highest total recorded in the race’s history – despite the race likewise having recorded the greatest number of caution laps (117) in Daytona’s 24-hour race history.

- With its let-it-all-hang-out racing over the race’s final 40-minutes as Montoya tried in vain to speed past Donohue, the 2009 Rolex 24 recorded the closest finish in the history of major international 24-hour motorsports events.

Having a history rich in racing vehicles, series and venues, David Donohue’s Rolex 24 win nevertheless put him in a select league of drivers Mark Donohue had himself entered 40 years earlier at Daytona with car-owner Penske, who in 2009 was among the first to congratulate David Donohue.

Next on Donohue’s 2009 agenda was a capturing his first Rolex Series DP driving championship.

Unshakably a member of the Brumos Racing team that began the 2003 season in earnest with a fall 2002 test at Daytona International Speedway, Donohue, with co-driver Mike Borkowski, would at one point lead the 2003 championship but ultimately finish second, just 8-points shy of winner Terry Borcheller.

Joined by Law for the 2004 season, many expected Donohue to win that year’s championship.

Instead, Donohue, Law and Brumos Racing would first experience nearly five seasons of frustration that at one point for analyses sake saw a complete FABCAR FDSC/03 Daytona Prototype shipped to Porsche’s R&D facility in Weissach, Germany.

The frustration began to ease for Donohue and his Brumos Racing teammates when the then No. 58 Red Bull-sponsored team last raced its final FABCAR (no. 007) chassis at the June 29, 2006 race at Daytona International Speedway, switching to a Riley Technologies MkXI (no. 029) for the following race at Barber Motorsports Park.

Though Donohue, Law and the Red Bull (which nearly everyone at the time used simply to describe the team, so synonymous had the two become) would start and finish 13^th at BMP, the pair in the season’s following final-three races recorded straight top-10 finishes – something the team hadn’t done since the 9^th race of the 2005 season.

Finishing 14^th in DP driving points at the end of 2006, the pair would zoom to sixth by 2007’s close.

Riding a string of seven top-5 finishes – five of which were top-3’s – Donohue and Law rose to fourth in 2008.

Thus, displaying unwavering loyalty despite four, perhaps five years of trial, tribulation and frustration, Donohue finally had the means by which to compete and went into the 2009 Rolex Series season as a genuine championship contender.

Yet, that season had hardly started when the wind filling the driver’s and team’s sails started slowly flagging as a first Grand-Am Technical Bulletin, designed to temper the Porsche-powered DP drive train, hit on Dec. 10, 2008.

Like a heavyweight boxer unable to plant his feet and fight, Donohue after the 2009 Rolex 24 win was knocked and kept off balance by a season-long series of eight rules changes that first sapped the Porsche-powered DPs of their might, then slowly, through Aug. 18, 2009, all but traveled a full circle as the Porsches were largely returned to their pre-2009 state.

It was a crushing, embittering blow to Donohue who with his many connections to racing has long been acutely aware of the difficulty of winning a championship – one he might now not win at all.

Though Penske Racing’s No. 12 Porsche-Riley was certainly likewise affected – it mostly believing the rules changes to be aimed solely at it – Penske drivers Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard also thrice shot themselves in the feet with Rolex Series race-rule infractions that went entirely unmatched by Donohue and Law.

Between the three Porsche-powered DPs, such likely would’ve provided the telling difference in a 2009 championship eventually won by GAINSCO’s Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty.

One can only hope the powers that be are appreciative of an undying loyalty, passed from one generation to the next, shown by the Donohues to a team, a series and racing as a whole.

Later,

DC

More can be learned of Mark Donohue’s short but very full life in Michael Argetsinger’s Mark Donohue, Technical Excellence At Speed, published by David Bull Publishing and available at amazon.com

WILL STALLINGS ROCK AT THE GLEN?

 

Stallings’ Defends Record

WATKINS GLEN - The July 18 New Jersey Motorsports Park 250 presented by Crown Royal was the right place at sort of the wrong time for the Bob Stallings Racing No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley, driven by Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney.

Fogarty won the New Jersey Motorsports Park 250 Presented by Crown Royal pole in record fashion, then led 12 of the team’s 14 lead laps; Gurney led two lead laps at the most important time and the Rolex Series’ defending champions won the race. In Victory Lane Bob Stallings (front, at left) got down and funky with part of the winning booty, a PRS Guitar awarded to winning owners.

The downside of the win: it came with only three races remaining in a Rolex Series season that now appears all but solidly owned by nemeses Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas’ No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley, owned by Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Sabates (below, Friday at The Glen).

While the “Red Dragon" driving duo in their 2007 championship season run successfully pulled an initially difficult rabbit from its top hat (after finishing 46^th overall, 22^nd in class at the Rolex 24 opener) this season with Fogarty sixth and Gurney ninth in Daytona Prototype championship points, one wonders why the GAINSCO team still is digging deep or, for that matter, why it’s still around at all?

“I don’t want to take anything away from Alex or Jon winning their driving championships, of course,” Stallings said from Watkins Glen Friday, “but it takes a team to win.”

“Every member of the GAINSCO team makes a critical contribution to achieving that success. It’s far more important to me that we win as a team. Really, the driving championship doesn’t mean near as much to me as does the team championship.”

“Since we gelled as a team in the 2007 season, it’s been 1-2, 1-2, them or us winning  the team championship or finishing second,” Bob Stallings said at Watkins Glen Friday, where Saturday’s Crown Royal 200 will be contested at 6 p.m..

“We know we can’t win the driving championship at this point but we’re currently third (231 pt.) in the team championship. So, while we can’t win, we can take second and continue that tradition of it being either the GAINSCO team or the TELMEX team alternating first and second places in the team championship. That sets the stage for us coming back and winning the championship in 2011. From that standpoint it’s important to the team to win whatever races remain so that we continue the tradition by overtaking the SunTrust team (240 pt.) for second.” (below is the GAINSCO Chevrolet-Riley at The Glen, Friday).

“Second, the GAINSCO team has the record for most wins,” Stallings said of the team’s seven-win, single-season Rolex Series record set during its 2007 championship run, followed by a second championship in 2009.

With six wins in 2010 and three remaining races, Pruett, Rojas and the TELMEX team not only have a chance at tying that record but exceeding it.

“That we scored those seven wins and that the GAINSCO car is in the record books as having set that record is important to us,” Stallings said.

“We don’t want to see anyone else get a piece of that record and we’re going to do all we can to keep it that way, too.”

Later,

DC

THE GLEN, THEN

 

After winning their first race on May 18, 2003, at Barber Motor Sports Park in Birmingham, Ala., Terry Borcheller and Forest Barber brought their No. 54 Bell Motorsports Chevrolet-Doran's to the 2003 Bully Hill Vineyards 250 to score their fourth victory in six races.

Overcoming what at one point was a one-lap deficit to finish 8-seconds behind in second place were Daytona Prototype driving championship points leaders David Donohue and Mike Borkowski in their No. 58 Brumos Racing's Porsche-FABCAR.

Third place went to Didier Theys and Bill Auberlen in a sparkling new No. 27 Lista JE4 Toyota-Doran, which turned its first competitive lap at The Glen II.

Donohue and Borkowski departed The Glen leading Borcheller by a single point while J.C. France and teammate Hurley Haywood fell from second to third place in the championship standings.

Finishing first in GT and fifth overall was Court Wagner and Brent Martini in the No. 33 Ferrari 360GT; first in GTS, seventh overall were Rick Carelli (moonlighting from NASCAR’s Truck Series), John Metcalf and Dave Liniger in the No. 05 Team Re/Max (Spirit of Daytona Racing) Corvette.

"I really like this series. It's a lot like what I came from. Besides, what else am I going to do tonight; sit in my motor coach?” Robby Gordon said just before the race, for which he teamed with Darius Grala in the No. 3 Cegwa Sports Toyota-FABCAR and drove it like a bat outta hell.

2004 - Given the frequency of rain showers coinciding with The Glen’s short-course race, monkey wrenches have been thrown at many of the New York wine country track’s early August races and thus was the case for the 2004 Sahlen’s 200 at The Glen.

Starting on a grid set by points after qualifying was washed out, with five laps remaining in the race Didier Theys watched co-driver Jan Magnussen drive their No. 27 Doran-Lista Racing Lexus to first place around a fading No. 10 SunTrust Pontiac-Riley of MaxAxe Angelelli and Wayne Taylor.

“Wayne is going to start and I know he will put it in first place, so we will have an easy race,” Angelelli said after qualifying was washed out.

Oops.

The SunTrust car’s race got still worse when the No. 6 Michael Shank Racing Lexus-Doran with (who else?) Oswaldo Negri Jr. and Burt Frisselle drove around it as well to finish second while the No. 10 SunTrust car stemmed its slide to take third.

Taking first in GT (9^th overall) was the No. 22 PTG (Tom Milner) BMW of Joey Hand and Boris Said; first in SGS (16^th overall) was the No. 37 TPC Racing Porsche driven by Spencer Pumpelly and John Littlechild.

2005 - For the first time since the Daytona Prototype class burst onto the Rolex Series' racing scene a Roush-Yates built Ford engine was the fastest overall DP qualifier for the 2005 CompUSA 200 on the 2.45-mile Watkins Glen International short course.

The pole-sitting No. 77 Ford-Doran of Italians Fabrizio Gollin and Matteo Bobbi would top the leaderboard with a race-high 29 laps on the point but would eventually fall to a 10th-place finish following a late-race pit stop.

As a result the No. 10 SunTrust Pontiac-Riley of Wayne Taylor and MaxAxe Angelelli won their fourth race of the 2005 season that would end still better for the longtime racing duo.

Finishing second in only the team’s fourth race were Alex Gurney and Glen rookie Bob Stallings in their No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac-Riley.

"This is the first time that I’ve ever seen the track in person,” Stallings said.

Taking third was the (not green) No. 66 Krohn Racing/TRG Pontiac-Riley of Jörg Bergmeister and Christian Fittipaldi.

In a now-consolidated Grand Touring class, Paul Edwards and Jan Magnussen claimed Pontiac’s first GT-class victory in the No. 64 TRG Pontiac GTO.R. Second were Joey Hand and Justin Marks in the No. 16 F1 Air BMW Team PTG M3, with Spencer Pumpelly and John Littlechild third in the No. 36 TPC Racing Porsche GT3 Cup.

2006 - Coming into the 2006 Crown Royal 200 in one of its most dismal Rolex Series seasons was Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix (y José) Sabates’ No. 01 CompUSA Lexus-Riley. Divers Scott Pruett and Luis Diaz by that time had managed to counter three wining efforts with a like number of 20^th-or-worst finishes.

Thus it was a sweet victory for the CompUSA duo when they finished just ahead of second-place SunTrust Racing’s No. 10 Pontiac-Riley, driven by MaxAxe Angelelli and Ryan Briscoe.

"We’ve had our fair share of firsts but we’ve had a lot of bad luck, too," Pruett said afterward.

Third in the 26-entry, first-time Daytona Prototype-only field were Patrick Long and Mike Rockenfeller in Alex Job Racing’s No. 23 Ruby Tuesday Porsche-Crawford.

In its first full season and fading to 13^th after Alex Gurney qualified first on the grid (1:07.496 at 130.674 mph) was GAINSCO Auto Insurance’s No. 99 Pontiac-Riley, co-driven by Jon Fogarty, who joined the team for the season’s fifth race at VIR.

2007 - Teamed with Memo Rojas for the bulk of the season (excepting the Rolex 24), Scott Pruett came into the 2007 Crown Royal 200 at The Glen race alone atop the Daytona Prototype driving championship standings.

In what had become a mano-a-mano championship battle, singles Pruett and MaxAxe Angelelli were separated by a scant two-points coming into The Glen..

Seven championship-points behind Angelelli in third were Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney. As it had the previous year, the blood-red GAINSCO Auto Insurance’s No. 99 Pontiac-Riley claimed the DP-only race pole, only this time Fogarty was at the wheel and claimed a record-tying seventh single-season DP pole record set by Max Papis in 2004.

Although the GAINSCO team had thus far scored a series-best five wins, its drivers had yet to stand atop the championship standings following a dismal first-race 22^nd-place finish in DP (46^th overall) in the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

Yet, even though they’d lay waste to the field and lead all but one lap of 82 total (Gurney compiled 48 lead laps; Fogarty 33), the GAINSCO pair took their sixth win of the season at the Crown Royal 200. Yet, Gurney and Fogarty would only inch closer to the top of the DP points race, exiting where they had come in; third in the championship fight with only two remaining races.

Finishing second in the race but moving into a tie with Pruett for the driving championship, however, was Angelelli, joined in a one-off* race by an admirably performing Memo Gidley in the No. 10 SunTrust Pontiac-Riley’s cockpit for the Crown Royal 200. *(“Regular” Jan Magnussen had a schedule conflict.)

A Lap-69 yellow had given Pruett one last chance to move around his championship pursuers and pad his point margin but was left in a cloud of red dust to finish third with Rojas in their No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley.

"Man, I wanted that yellow because it enabled us to tighten up and gave me a chance to move around Max and, maybe, the 99 car," Pruett said, "But when it went green Alex just pulled away from the both of us like we were stuck in quicksand."

2008 - After Brian Frisselle and his No. 61 AIM Autosport Ford-Riley (chassis No. 001) surprised a few folks by setting a new Glen short-course qualifying record of 1:05.243 (135.187 mph), NASCAR stars Jimmie Johnson, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jeff Burton, Dario Franchitti and A.J. Allmendinger were among those gathered in the Rolex Series’ pits to watch the 2008 Crown Royal 200 at The Glen.

Perhaps as surprising was the outside-pole car, the No. 58 Brumos Racing Porsche-Riley, driven by David Donohue.

Then again, after Bob Stallings’ No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac-Riley over the three previous seasons scored two Crown Royal poles and one outside pole, perhaps as surprising was Jon Fogarty starting on the grid’s fourth spot.

Yet, the biggest surprise of all didn’t really even come with Frisselle and Mark Wilkins driving their Aim Autosport car to a subsequent race win as much as how the pair won.

Though Wilkins and Frisselle had come to The Glen after winning a real finish-line squeaker (0:00.064) in the previous race at Montreal, the AIM team’s surprising downright powerful performance was in its posting 79 lead laps (Wilkins 49; Frisselle 30) on the way to the checkered flag – second only to 82 leading laps posted by previous Crown Royal 200 winners Alex Gurney and Fogarty.

Compared to AIM’s Montreal win, finishing a massive two-seconds behind in second at The Glen were Fogarty and Gurney’s No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac-Riley. Coming into the race second in championship points, the driving pair exited The Glen in exactly the same position.

Donohue and co-driver Darren Law finished in third, scoring the No.58’s seventh straight top-5 finish in seven 2008 starts, as well as retaining their third-place championship standing. Strongly hinted, though, was the shape of things to come for the Porsche team’s 2009 season. Only that which awaited wasn’t exactly what the team and everyone else thought might come; that being another story for another year.

A 62-degree race-day temperature and an on-again, off-again rain-peppered race surface hassled Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas’ No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley, their car being among those spinning through the race. A 13^th –place finish proved to be the TLEMEX team’s worst performance of the 2008 season – it in the 10 preceding races having scored eight podiums, including six wins.

Having at that time compiled such a lead that the TELMEX team could’ve all but sat out the 2008 season’s remaining races, awaiting was a race-practice accident that could’ve proved a game-changer.

2009 - Joined again with the Grand Touring class for the 2009 Crown Royal 200 at The Glen, the Rolex Series Daytona Prototype driving championship points leaders came into the race tied in a four-driver, two-team knot.

In first were the familiar faces of 2007 champs Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney. And, in first, were defending series champs Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas.

On a roll, Pruett and Rojas’ TELMEX team had scored two wins among four top-two finishes in the races immediately preceding The Glen.

Also on a roll were the guys over in the GAINSCO pits. After scoring earlier-season wins at VIR and Laguna, in the three races coming into The Glen, Fogarty and Gurney compiled third, second and first-place finishes.

With four remaining races and 924 first-place points spread over the four drivers, the 2009 Crown Royal 200 was shaping up to be an immovable wall versus an unstoppable force type of deal.

Complicating matters just 16-points behind in third were the No. 10 SunTrust (now) Ford-Dallara drivers, Brian Frisselle and MaxAxe Angelelli, who’ve been nip-nip-nipping at the leader’s heels since at least the season’s third race.

(By the way, MaxAxe once sold pushed lots of prosciutto so as to support his racing habit. So, Mr. Sahlen, if you need someone who knows how to ham it up . . .)

Making like a west Texas roadrunner chased by a hungry coyote, in an opening salvo Fogarty returned to pole-winning Glen form in Bob Stallings’ No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac-Riley, busting a record-setting 1:05.069 (135.548 mph) lap.

Following right behind in second was Rojas in the No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley and, in third, (go ahead, take a wild guess) was Brian Frisselle and Team SunTrust (who bested brother Burt Frisselle, in the No. 61 AIM Autosport Ford-Riley, by one one-hundredth of one second).

Separated by less than three-tenths of one second and just when everyone was looking for a clean (or dirty) fight among the aforementioned three (or six), interlopers would dare commence to challenge the race’s established hierarchy.

The first was Ricky Taylor, who from Lap-45 through Lap-66 of the race’s 93 laps would lead a race-high 22 laps (matched only by Rojas) in Beyer Racing’s No. 13 Lennox/Brach’s Candy Chevrolet-Riley. (BTW: Happy Birthday, Rick! And should you race poorly this Saturday, everyone will know what you did on your 21^st birthday.)

The second spoiler was Scott Tucker’s Level5 No. 55 BMW-Riley with Frenchman Christophe Bouchut (rhymes with boohoo) at the wheel and who tried his level best to win the race by jump-starting the field (no, Cummings, battery cables weren’t involved).

Lastly, but most importantly interloping, was the Mean Green Texas Machine (proudly fueled by highly refined petroleum), Krohn Racing’s No. 76 Proto-Auto Ford-Lola, driven by Nic Jönsson and Ricardo Zonta. The latter driver led the race’s final 21 laps to win going away (unfortunately, it really, really did do just that after The Glenn).

Shutout from leading even a single lap, Pruett still brought the No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley home in second place, followed by Bouchut (rhymes with boohoo) in third and the GAINSCO gang in fourth, all but stymied after leading the race’s first five laps.

Running in the top-5 with fewer than 20-laps remaining, MaxAxe was at the wheel of the SunTrust car when Bouchut (rhymes with boohoo) muscled his way past, sending the SunTrust car into “innocent bystander” Bryce Miller and his No. 48 Marquis Jet/IPC Porsche GT3 - both ultimately landing in the pits and essentially out of the race.

Having earlier led the race for 12 laps with Brian Frisselle, the SunTrust car’s 12^th-place finish – a second fall from grace in as many races – was tough on the psyche, even though their points gap actually narrowed to 14, and the accomplishment of which beats me (rocket science wasn’t my forte, which rhymes with “fort,” is French in origin and is synonymous with “strongpoint” or “personal strength,” and has nothing at all to do with musical term “forte,” which is Italian, rhymes with “day” and indicates “loud.” So, too, is “provolone” Italian, but that cheesy subject will be properly pronounced some other time).

Coming into their own in the 2009 Crown Royal 200 at The Glen were SpeedSource’s Emil Assentato, Jeff Segal and their No. 69 FXDD Mazda RX-8, where the two finally flexed some “short-race” muscle in winning GT.

Second in GT were Leh Keen and Dirk Werner’s Farnbacher Loles Porsche, whose first-place GT championship push was only further solidified.

In third was the No. 30 Racers Edge Mazda RX-8 of Dane Cameron and Tom Sutherland, which in 2010 would prove to be even more distracting to the “big boys.”

But that was then; this Saturday’s Crown Royal 200 at The Glen is “now,” with a 6 p.m. SPEED airing being live.

Later,

DC