LOVE AND HATE

LEXINGTON, Ohio -- On the one hand, there's Brumos Racing, whose contributions to racing -- should anyone in racing have somehow missed their scope and magnitude -- have been considerable.

Of Brumos' prominent founders, the late Bob Snodgrass also was instrumental in getting the Grand American Road Racing Association -- now just "Grand-Am" -- off the ground at the tail end of last century.

Another who is deeply involved in both Brumos Racing and the Jacksonville, Fla., Brumos automobile dealership chain from which the team draws its soul, is entrepreneur Dan Davis, who was a well-established Floridian when Snodgrass (along with Mike Colucci) cars in knee pants watched race cars compete in downtown Watkins, Glen, N.Y.

Then there's yet another race-day member of the Brumos Racing "founding" cast, Hurley Haywood, who as a driver captured wins for "Brumos" in cars as diverse as 914-6's, 917's, 935's, 962's and a Porsche-powered FABCAR. Still, Haywood can be found wherever Brumos Racing may be, lending his brain if not his body to the No. 59's Porsche GT3 Cup car's effort.

Brumos Racing drivers Leh Keen and Andrew Davis -- both having developed championship forms before joining Brumos for 2011 -- admitted to understanding theirs would be a tough first year but, as Davis put it, "How can you not be a part of the Brumos team if you've got the opportunity?"

Many others -- from the doggedly handsome Don Leatherwood to "Peppermint" Patti Tantillo -- also "bleed" Brumos red, blue and white.

On the other hand, there's Autohaus Motorsports.

A relative "new kid" on the block when compared to Brumos, Autohaus Motorsports was founded by Robert Kirkland in 1999, yet, it isn't much of a stretch to believe that a guy who sold Mercedes-Benz cars for a living, just as has Brumos, knows a thing or two about sports cars and racing, too.

Whether "new" or old hand, though, doesn't much matter because people don't get into racing, whether at the ownership or driving level, not to win - if you catch the drift.

Also not interested in just tooling around tracks for fun is Autohaus driver Bill Lester.

Having scored a BS in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, Lester intellectually is on a par with some of racing's greatest names -- past and present.

Lester so loved racing he gave up a cushy job and left behind a whole bunch of stock options when racing's siren song successfully called him away from Hewlett Packard.

Lester's not done badly at racing, financially speaking, but who in racing doesn't think he could've done still better toiling in some dark, pizza-box and Coke Zero-bottle-strewn computer engineering lab?

As have so many others with their work lives; even their love lives, Lester gave up a lot to find that better line; that perfect apex.

The team's other driver is Jordan Taylor, one of Wayne and Shelley Taylor's offspring.

SunTrust Daytona Prototype driver Ricky Taylor, Jordan's older brother by just under two years, has been getting the lion's share of attention over the last year or so, but those who hang around racing know Jordan Taylor is far from a slouch.

Indeed, stints in Karting, Skip Barber and Formula Mazda notwithstanding, Jordan Taylor this year in Rolex Series GT was on pace to be the first of the brothers to win a national-level, major sportscar racing championship in that black-and-red No. 88 Autohaus Chevrolet Camaro.

On the Friday night prior to the Mid-Ohio race, it looked like Jordan Taylor would score that championship, too, though certainly nothing ever in racing (if not everywhere else, too) is certain.

The above cast of characters would be largely responsible for squaring the 2011 Rolex Sports Car Series' Grand Touring driver, team and manufacturer championships this past weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports car Course, all of it coming on the heels of a fifth championship-points lead change in a class within which seven different teams have won in 2011.

With Autohaus atop Brumos by just three points when the team transporters parked and disgorged their respective contents at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, each team needed to hit on all cylinders just to maintain the status quo or, perhaps, one to miss a cylinder or two to drastically change it all.

As Friday qualifying got underway the Brumos Racing team would hit on none of them. Not a one.

Try as it may, not a single cylinder of Brumos Racing engine's six cylinders would fire its fuel charge and without a qualifying time, it would be sent to the rear of the starting grid.

"I was pumped to get the pole," Davis said late in the day as he and co-driver Keen headed for the parking lot.

"We had some fast times in practice and I felt like I could get it."

When a Daytona Prototype is sent "to the rear," it goes to the head of the GT pack. Well kinda, sorta and not exactly. But it ain't the "back," as was found Chip Ganassi Racing's Memo Rojas in the No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley DP when, subsequent to a post-qualifying engine change, he on the race grid found himself at least preceding the Stevenson Auto Group's No. 57Chevrolet Camaro and Whelen Engineering's No. 31 Chevrolet Corvette.

In his Brumos Porsche, Davis, however, really was at the field's rear.

"There's a whole bunch of cars in front of you from there," Davis said in complete sincerity.

Winning the GT title suddenly had taken on a whole new dimension -- for everyone but Davis, who pledged to take the lead and did just that on Lap 27.

Talk about lonely: Sitting inside his idled Autohaus Camaro, one can only imagine the slow-motion silence Lester, must've felt just after a slippery track threw him from it on Lap 15.

For two laps Lester would sit, completely alone, between asphalt and metal barrier.

The silence must've been

deafening as he saw the championship fade from his grasp.

Frankly, Autohaus, Bill Lester and Jordan Taylor deserved better.

But so too did Brumos, Leh Keen and Andrew Davis -- and got it.

One race pretty well summed why this writer hates this sport -- and loves it, too.

Later,

EIGHT MID-O's DOWN; ONE TO GO

A look back and not-so-bold look forward.

June 28, 2003 - Round 7 of the 2003 Rolex Sports Car Series -- After losing the previous week's Sahlen's Six Hours of The Glen race lead over the span of that race's two remaining laps, arising anew the following week at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course were eerily similar circumstances which likewise involved a late-race yellow flag, also occurred with but two remaining laps and left drivers Forest Barber and Terry Borcheller to wondering if life was but a series of replays wherein the locale may change but the script remained pretty much the same.

Whether attributable to lessons learned and differently applied or fate merely hanging a left instead of a right, their Jim Bell-prepared and managed No. 54 Bell Motorsports Chevrolet-powered Doran JE-4 found Mid-Ohio's Victory Lane.

Yet, in every case which involves those who snatch victory from the jaws of defeat lie those on the flipside of that coin: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as it were.

Borcheller was at the No. 54's Chevrolet-Doran's wheel when the engine of the No. 29 Ford Mustang of Eric Curran (at the wheel) and Stu Hayner could motor no more - the GTS-class Mustang having dominated the race, leading it for more than 50 laps of the 102-lap race before yielding.

Finishing second was David Donohue, paired with Mike Borkowski in the No. 58 Red Bull Porsche-FABCAR, after the driver slowly unwound an earlier, grass-mowing excursion, likely the only thing having prevented Bork and Donohue from occupying the podium's topmost step because, as is the case in life, all it ever takes is "just enough." In third was Tommy Riggins and David Machavern in the No. 48 Heritage Ford Mustang GTS.

Aug. 7, 2004 - Round 7 of the 2004 Rolex Sports Car Series -- The start of the 2004 season at Daytona brought with it a plethora of new Daytona Prototypes and by mid-season "new kid" Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates had become the bona fide monster of the Rolex Sports Car Series' midway - only there were two such monsters: Scott Pruett and Massimiliano Papis in the No. 01 CompUSA Lexus-Riley; Jimmy Morales and Luis Diaz in the No. 02 CompUSA Lexus-Riley.

After Papis led Laps 1 through 35 and Pruett Laps 39-96 (Wayne Taylor and his mean-ass-looking SunTrust No. 10 car was the only other race leader), at race end it the No. 2 Citgo Crawford-Chevrolet of Venezuelan Milka Duno and English hot shoe Andy Wallace, effectively drove a wedge between the two Ganassi monsters at the conclusion of the Mid-Ohio Road Racing Classic's finishing order. in a sign of the shape things to come, four additional DPs finished on the lead lap of the 96-lap race.

Aug. 27, 2005 - Round 10 of the 2005 Rolex Sports Car Series -- In a finish that saw the members of a half-dozen race teams all but fight each other for space in their respective pits so as to gain clear sight of the final, fleeting moments of the EMCO Gears Classic at Mid-Ohio, six Daytona Prototypes charged toward the finish line from the final three turns of the 2.258-mile, 13-turn course, the first and sixth-place finishers of which respectively book-ending the 61/100-of-one-whole-second spread which contained 'em all at race end.

The 94-lap, 225.6-mile race saw 22 Daytona Prototypes undertake the epic battle at race start; 17 DPs finishing at the head of the field's two-class race at its finish.

Out front were Butch Leitzinger and Official Old Guy Grand Pooh-Bah Elliott Forbes-Robinson in their No. 4 red-on-black Boss Snow Plow Crawford-Pontiac, followed closely in second place by Scott Pruett and Luis Diaz in their No. 01 CompUSA Lexus-Riley. In third were Wayne Taylor and Max Angelelli's No. 10 SunTrust Racing Pontiac-Riley, now tamed in its more sanguine and now-familiar SunTrust blue.

June 24, 2006 - Round 9 of the 2006 Rolex Sports Car Series -- While the No. 12 Lowe's Fernandez Racing Pontiac Riley might've started last among the Daytona Prototypes, co-drivers Mexican racing god Adrian Fernandez and Brazilian Mario Haberfeld nevertheless found the means and determination to drive their No. 12 Lowe's Fernandez Racing Pontiac-Riley through the field to earn their first - and last - Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series overall victory.

Compared to 2005's close conga-line finish, all but a yawner was Fernandez' 3.089-second winning margin over Krohn Racing's second-place Ford-Riley, driven by Colin Braun and eventual 2006 champion, Jörge Bergmeister. Finishing third, paired for only their fourth race, were Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney in the GAINSCO Auto Racing's No. 99 Pontiac-Riley.

In what has become Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates' definitive worst-ever Daytona Prototype finish, Luis Diaz and Scott Pruett crossed the line 36th, some 14-laps in arrears to the leaders, after the No. 01 CompUSA Lexus -Riley tangled in Turn 9 of the 13-turn course with brothers Burt and Brian Frisselle, one of whom having driven the No. 8 Synergy Doran-Porsche DP, essentially to the junk pile, but which set up a resultant funky but frightening crash involving driver Joey Hand.

Driving the No. 21 Matt Connolly Motorsports BMW M3, Hand and Paul Edwards, in the No. 64 TRG Pontiac Pratt & Miller GTO.R , were two among a nearly inestimable pack of GT drivers longing for a win and being handed such opportunity when, on Lap 97 of the race's 99 laps, the Mid-O track went from full-on, no-passing yellow to go-get-'em green.

In a scrum much akin to a pack of greyhounds chasing a warm, fuzzy fake rabbit, just about each of the cars were battling for the race's GT-class win when Edwards made contact with the rear of Hand's car, forcing the No. 21 machine off and eventually into a series of bumps, jumps and flips - or maybe that should've been jumps, bumps and flips - that, in turn, drew hundreds-of-thousands of YouTube hits.

June 23, 2007 - Round 7 of the 2007 Rolex Sports Car Series -- With an air similar to that of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's march across The South, Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty took the look of a team possessed with rolling over and crushing their competition in one of 2007's handful of Daytona Prototype-only races.

In earlier qualifying Fogarty put the blood-red, Bob Stallings-owned No. 99 Pontiac-Riley on the EMCO Gears Classic at Mid-Ohio pole – the team’s fourth pole and its seventh consecutive front-row start by that point in the 2007 season. The pair soon afterward also scored its third victory of the 2007 season, at the time becoming the sole DP team to have won more than one race thus far in the season.

Well into their cool-down lap, breaking loose were howls of non-official but nonetheless vociferous protests nip, nip, nipping on the No. 99 team's heels faster than the "best of the rest." Thirty seconds and what may as well have been miles behind in second place were Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas in Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 01 TELMEX Lexus-Riley. In third were Colin Braun and Max Papis in the No. 75 Krohn Racing Pontiac-Riley.

June 22, 2008 - Round 8 of the 2008 Rolex Sports Car Series -- In what was becoming an apparent tradition of domination that included an unmatched combination of pole positions, front-row starts, podium and first-place finishes, Jon Fogarty, Alex Gurney and the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac-Riley team again showed a mastery of the 2.26-mile, 13-turn Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, even though not quite as great of a mastery as that demonstrated in 2007.

Given Gurney and Fogarty tend toward being cerebral, gentlemanly types disposed of Victory Lane celebrations having a touch of solemnity, arising in that special area where solemn accolades sometimes flow was a veritable nuclear meltdown - coming from a Brumos Racing camp who suddenly again realized, "Yes, we can!"

Having finished second, defined by some as the "First of the Losers," drivers David Donohue and Darren Law and the team's No. 58 Brumos Porsche arrived at race end to its first podium finish in a monkey uncle's age. Unrealized at the time was an impending success that ultimately led to a 2009 season during the first of which every force situated outside the camp would seemingly work against the team to keep its drivers from winning a championship, collaterally collecting the No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche-Riley sister car, in which drivers J.C France and Joao Barbosa had finished fifth at Mid-O, driving the team apoplectic with its dual top-five finish.

Almost anti-climatically, in third place was Matt Plumb and Gene Segal's No. 7 Rum Bum Racing BMW-Riley DP effort, which sadly by season's end would end.

June 21, 2009 - Round 6 of the 2009 Rolex Sports Car Series -- Just as has been the case nearly innumerable times since the driver climbed aboard his first kart, Scott Pruett relishes in "reigning" time and again upon any competitor's coronation parade - the GAINSCO Gang being Pruett's principal focus in things Grand-Am mainly due to the things the GAINSCO Gang themselves did . . . like "win."

Joined for a third-straight EMCO Gears Classic at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course race with Pruett but yet to break the mold cast for himself, Memo Rojas again played understudy to the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing w/ Felix (y José) Lexus-Riley's Top Dog.

In the 2009 version something had to give way between the two red, white and blue Daytona Prototypes (think about it) and the TRD "Lexus" engine would do just that when, in a pre-race announcement, was Toyota's North American marketing arm's decision to make like a horse and trot from the series at season's end.

First, though, a race and a championship was to be won.

Seizing the "last" Mid-O Toyota poignant moment as would have Shakespeare a sonnet, Pruett reminded the world that he, too, was of longstanding California stock, even though the genes directly preceding his helped make Levi jeans famous in the '49 Gold Rush instead of those who would rush to race-car finish lines.

Breaking entirely from tradition and making a green car (as in "color") do what it wasn't supposed to do were Niclas "Nic" Jönsson and Ricardo Zonta, the two sharing the No. 76 Krohn Racing Ford-Lola that had begun to field a fine but soon-to-be stilled set of racing legs.

Yet, from Pruett's perspective, like a bad dream not at all inclined to simply "go away" were fellow Californians Alex Gurney, Jon Fogarty and the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet-Riley fellows, generally otherwise linked to Texas, who placed third.

June 20, 2010 - Round 7 of the 2010 Rolex Sports Car Series -- Memo Rojas, finally establishing himself as a competent driver in his own right and among Mexico's best, put the No. 01 TELMEX BMW-Riley on pole and Pruett would end it there. Quietly establishing itself as the team to actually beat, the TELMEX duo combined to lead 64 of the race's 107 total laps, yielding to only four others (Nelson Philippe, 18 laps; Michael Valiante, 14; Mike Forest, 8; Buddy Rice, 3).

Mike Shank Racing's No. 60 Crown Royal XR Ford-Riley scored its second podium thus far in 2010, John Pew having qualified the car 10th and Ozz Negri bringing the car home second. In third was AIM Autosports' No. 61 Pacific Mobile/Bio sign Ford Riley with Burt Frisselle and Mark Wilkins at the wheel, the former having qualified right where the latter brought it home.

Sept. 17, 2011 - Round 12 of the 2011 Rolex Sports Car Series Season?

One thing is clear going into today's EMCO GEARS Classic at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course: Pruett and Rojas need only to drive complete, 30-minute segments apiece to walk with the 2011 Rolex Sports Car Series Daytona Prototype driving championship. Should the pair prevail at race end, it will amount to Pruett's fourth and Rojas' third win at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course since the Daytona Prototype first started competing here in 2003.

Perhaps all the more remarkable is the sheer dominating nature of the Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix (y José) Sabates team at the track since it first competed at Mid-O in 2004.

Already testing its 2012 version of the Gen 3 Daytona Prototype at its top-secret coast-down tunnel, one might as well expect to see the TELMEX team continue its roll.

Later,

DC