POST NJMP, PRE-WGI-2

BUMPING AND GRINDING

Practiced nearly without fail at nearly every race, the guys from Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (where’s José?) Sabates No. 01 TELMEX BMW Riley will store their car and head for the barn (“hotel” to you, Gary) when just about every other team still is thrashing on this or that for whatever race may be on the weekend’s schedule.

Not so at New Jersey.

Situated in one of NJMP’s main garage’s 10 spaces the TELMEX team worked well into Thursday and Friday’s late-afternoon hours, alternately changing suspension and gear components – ultimately allowing Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas to clinch their first NJMP victory on Saturday.

Still, the race hardly was a cruise for the TELMEX squad, which was penalized a “stop-and-go” for having rear-ended Ricky Taylor (celebrating a birthday this week, BTW) and his No. 10 SunTrust Chevrolet-Dallara.

“I felt bad about that,” Pruett said Sunday while at Indy (more on that, later). “I’m not sure what happened, but I didn’t get into him intentionally.”

HOT, HOT, HOT

Race car drivers get the lion’s share of well-deserved recognition for skills and fortitude absent of mere mortals, yet racing remains a team sport, as was demonstrated in the No. 40 Patrick Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8’s final pit stop.

A fresh Charles Espenlaub dumped the car’s clutch and roared away from the Dempsey Racing pits as a dumbfounded crewmember stood holding a desperately needed fresh recharge for the car’s cool-suit apparatus.

The cool suit easily will turn into a “hot” suit without the means to keep cool the water circulating through its veins, potentially leaving a driver’s cardiovascular system stressed beyond recovery, especially in a 130-degree cockpit.

Though admittedly an editorial shot in the dark, that inability to cool Espenlaub may well have contributed to a Lap 44 incident in which the No. 31 Whelen Corvette of Boris Said was “door-slammed,” as co-driver Eric Curran later put it. A winner just weeks earlier at Road America, Said’s Corvette had clawed upward through the New Jersey pack to eighth place when the car’s suspension was irreparably damaged by the “slam” and exited the race.

Meanwhile, the team’s No. 41 Global Diving sister car, driven by James Gué and Dane Cameron scored that driving duo’s first podium in 2011. Gué and Leh Keen, now paired with Andrew Davis at Brumos Racing, teamed for a 2010 race win in the No. 41 Mazda at The Glen.

The Brumos pair, driving the No. 59 Porsche, sit atop the standings by but a single point over the No. 88 of Jordan Taylor and Bill Lester – that single championship point as likely as not a courtesy of crewmembers Sean Mabry, Sean Murphy and Adain Murawski, who despite fire suits, helmets and a 139-degree pit road asphalt repaired a broken drive (aka, “accessory” or “fan”) belt on the compactly contained, complexly belted Porsche flat-six engine.

The broken belt drew a lot of attention from Porsche factory representatives, who surmised something, perhaps a bolt, was propelled into the engine compartment at just the wrong moment, wedging between the belt and a pulley, quickly stressing and snapping a belt pushed beyond the limits of a belt tensioner.

At New Jersey, Davis and Keen finished 12^th, while Lester and Taylor finished fourth, the former seriously putting a dent in the latter’s previous 10-point championship points lead.

Presently within 20 or fewer points of the leading Keen and Davis are another nine drivers beyond the aforementioned No. 88 Autohaus Chevrolet Camaro pair, all having a legitimate shot at winning or influencing the championship in the Rolex Series’ three remaining 2011 GT races.

CHANGING GEARS?

The Mazda RX8 appears to be heading toward the end of its production line, if the rumblings prove correct. One might consider scoring a Patrick Dempsey autographed version ASAP. For sure, this writer could do it but, how such might impact Mazda-associated Rolex Series teams remains to be seen.

Originally scheduled for an introduction at the Aug. 13 (a great date if one isn’t superstitious) Rolex Series short-course race at The Glen, it appears an announcement of the new Generation-3 Chevrolet “Corvette” Daytona Prototype (officially, “DPG3”) will come at a later date.

With the NASCAR crowd in full force at Watkins Glen during its originally scheduled date, it was believed to be the best possible date for an announcement by some within the automaker’s upper ranks. Still others, though, for unspecified reasons, felt it should come at a later date.

Conspiracy theorists have seen anything and everyone, from the EPA to other sanctioning body principals, as having had undue influence on the Chevy guys – even to the possible extent of canceling the project.

Interestingly, Chevrolet is into the Rolex Series unlike ever before. Really into it.

SUGGESTED READ

Gordon Kirby is someone this writer once “wanted to be” upon “growing up.”

No, it wasn’t that Kirby is that much older than yours truly, it’s just that he started pursuing his love of motorsports writing much sooner, relatively speaking, and in ability still is light years ahead of this correspondent.

Kirby, who has written for a just about any and every English-language motorsports-centered periodical published over the last four decades, also has impacted the sport as have few others of his ilk.

One of this writer’s earliest memories of Kirby is encountering him in the late 1980’s in Road Atlanta’s now long gone media center. To say it was an “intimate setting,” particularly when IMSA was in town, is an understatement of considerable proportion.

Already an AutoWeek “rock star,” Kirby would notably later ply his incredible talent at Racer, as well as authoring seven motorsports-related books.

And he’s still at it.

Suggested, then, as recent commentary published by Kirby: The Way It Is/ Struggling for an identity.

INDY DEMO

On hand for a Sunday static display at Indianapolis Motor Speedway were the No. 01 TARGET/TELMEX BMW-Riley out of the nearby Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix Sabates shop and Doran Racing’s No. 77 Office Depot/MacDonald’s/Freescale/HP Ford-Dallara, from slightly farther away (Cincinnati).

Pruett was joined by a small squad of TELMEX Racing’s elite crew at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Sunday, staging a pre-race “demonstration” that showcased NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, NASCAR Nationwide Series and NASCAR Grand-Am Rolex Series cars which took a three wide one-lap pass just minutes before this year’s Brickyard got underway.

The Rolex Series’ DP and GT cars, along with the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series, will start the three-day smorgasbord of racing, officially billed as the “Super Weekend at The Brickyard.” For exacting information, check out the countdown clock at right, which will be adjusted when the actual scheduled is published.

With at least a few major questions remaining – not the least of which is the IMS road course’s exact configuration – a September start of IMS road-course tire tests is slated, apparently to be followed by at least two others prior to the 2012 Super Weekend.

One can catch footage of Sunday’s “demonstration” at

Billed as the opening act for the, it’ll be a busy 27 July, 2012 for the Continental and Rolex squads, the latter of which on Friday will practice, qualify, race, celebrate in Victory Lane and then make like a sheepherder and get the flock out.

INTO THE FUTURE (Watkins Glen 2)

Media types, among which occasionally found is yours truly, who dabble (have hard cards, especially) in multiple series deal with hundreds of “press releases” just about every weekend. Indeed, “vacation time” comes in November, when just about everyone in racing chills to a large extent. The email doesn’t stop, for sure, but the number does fall, gratefully.

One from Ryan Dalziel kinda caught the eye:

“THE PLOT: Ryan Dalziel could be forgiven for being sick of the sight of Chip Ganassi Racing duo Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett.

The flying Scotsman has spent most of the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series campaign looking at their exhaust pipe.

But, as he heads into New York for the Watkins Glen 200 this weekend, August 12-13, Ryan is determined to give the Fort Lauderdale-based Starworks Motorsport team a vital shot in the arm.” (Italics added)

Dalziel is one of the most talented Scottish racers around (methinks Dalziel actually will appreciate that distinction more so than, say, “among the world’s best”) but the wrong things seem to happen at the wrong time for the personable chap – such as Henry Zogaib (whose travails soon are to be fodder for an update, herein).

Dalziel’s Starworks team, headed by the ever resourceful Peter Baron – who squeezes pennies as well anyone – recently bought a couple of Penske Porsche-configured Rileys for a reasonable price (can you say “fire sale?”) and first deployed one of the acquired cars at Road America.

Dalziel and co-driver Alex Popow (darn near unknown outside of his native Venezuela and neighboring South American countries, Popow’s very, very capable) need only to get a handle of the car to do as well as the team-wide talent reflects and it may well come at the Glen, where keeping the revs up is a rewarding experience.

This weekend at the Glen is gonna be busy, what with NASCAR Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Rolex Series and others hanging around.

Kind of provides a preview of The Shape of Things To Come.

Later,

DC