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