AIN’T NO WAY!

Now that fait accompli is Lady Gaga in Times Square on New Year's Eve having had a ball with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is it too late to publish a 2011 "best" list?

Inasmuch as many astute motorsports journalists have already published top-10 lists focusing on various series and within which its "best" drivers, teams and etc., your humble scribe feels only somewhat compelled to do the same.

Thus, he digresses a bit with his simple yet distinctly complex, "AIN'T NO WAY!" Awards, the occurrence of that which follows being entirely haphazard.

After finally settling a reported monetary squabble originating in 2001 -- whether it hallucinatory, paid, forgiven or forgotten -- the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series' 2010 return to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin's Road America race track was delayed until 2011 (something had to give when vociferous cries arose for a "West Coast" race upon such being omitted with the 2010 schedule's original release).

After finally arriving in cheese-head land and those angered, roaring race car engines having since fallen silent, most everyone likely thought the race's highlight was Gunter Schaldach and Joe Foster taking wing at the 4-mile road course's Turn One perimeter.

Schaldach having flown his No. 07 TheCoolTV Camaro beyond it, while Foster, having been gently extracted from his No. 40 VisitFlorida.com Mazda, was soon thereafter flying, too -- albeit in a hospital-bound helicopter.

While it was the kind of crash that makes onlookers cringe and sponsors cheer (exposure, exposure, exposure) and women swoon, your scribe deigns to disagree that "flying" surprise trumped all else at Road America's 2011 Rolex Series race.

Nope, the race's biggest surprise started coming together when No. 31 Whelen Engineering Corvette regular driver Boris Said temporarily booked it to Fairytale Land, alternately known as California or "The Left Coast," so as to compete in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.

(Should anyone think Greece and the Euro to be a big deal, just wait 'till the un-Golden State implodes.)

Thus short one of its "A-Team" drivers, Marsh Racing paired John Heinricy with its "other" A-driver, Eric Curran.

An engineer and a retired GM High Performance Vehicles director who over the years has squeezed in a couple-hundred-or-so car races, The HeinRocket didn't disappoint, placing the unfamiliar Corvette on the race's second row.

Upon Heinricy's race-shift conclusion, co-driver Curran was presented with a healthy car for a finishing push that ended at the absolute front of the Rolex Series' Road America Grand Touring field.

Considering the team had in nine 2010 races (missing the Rolex 24, HMS and DIS 2) averaged a 14.4 finish and, though albeit better, a 9.6 average finishing position in 2011's five races prior to Road America, thus emerged was one of 2011's biggest surprises, barely edging "Ain't No Way!" second-place finisher Team Sahlen.

AIN'T NO WAY!

Coincidentally occurring at the same track, Road America, and the same race, the Rolex Sports Car Series Driven by VisitFlorida.com, Nonnamaker Racing's three Sahlen-sponsored Mazda RX-8 cars, lacking relative straight-line speed, had to lean heavily on carving and cutting the famed 4-mile Road America course into bits and pieces, not unlike a butcher at work.

"We came in here (Road America) concerned about our being down on power, especially with this track's long straights, so we concentrated on getting the car to turn," team engineer Catherine Wallace said after Wayne Nonnamaker and his No. 42 Sahlen Mazda RX-8 scored his first top qualifying spot since a 2004 SGS (defunct) class pole at Daytona International Speedway.

Employing a deft pit strategy during the 13-lap, 50-minute caution that followed Gunter Schaldach's No. 07 TheCoolTV Chevrolet Camaro's tangle with Joe Foster's No. 40 VisitFlorida.com Mazda RX-8, the team's newly enlisted MazdaSpeed Ladder driver John Edwards -- who too often fails to appear on "best driver" lists not because he isn't -- drove the No. 42 Mazda to a second-place finish fewer than 6/10ths of one second behind winner Eric Curran's No. 31 Whelen Corvette.

AIN'T NO WAY!

Third in the most-competitive-to-date Ain't No Way Awards (even if this be the first ANWA) is a team that over the last two seasons scored back-to-back, fourth-place GT team championship finishes but still was mostly, if not completely shuttered at 2011's end.

For 2010, James Gué and Leh Keen teamed to drive the newly formed No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving & Salvage Mazda RX-8.

Harbored in Norcross, Ga., along with Dempsey Racing's No. 40 VisitFlorida.com Mazda RX-8 sister car, the team was comprised mostly of new-to-Dempsey personnel who, in only their second race, would score a podium finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Though all Mazda RX-8s labored in 2011 relative to 2010's rules, a well-prepared car, devoted pit work and a mighty fine pit-side folding table, atop which the No. 41's engineer, crew chief and team manager toiled, Gué and Keen, on their way to a fifth place in the GT driving championship, delivered 11 top-10, six top-5 and four podium finishes that first season, capped by an unforgettable Crown Royal 250 win at Watkins Glen International -- Dempsey Racing's first in the Rolex Series.

After 2010's trophies were distributed in Las Vegas, 2009 GT-champion Keen, for some odd reason, opted for Brumos Racing's hallowed ground for the 2011 season.

Staying put at Dempsey for 2011, Gué was joined by up-and-coming 23-year-old Dane Cameron, who's compiled multiple rookie-of-the-year awards and as well as championships, simultaneously collecting both in the 2007 Star Mazda season.

After the Mazda RX-8 platform claimed 4-of-5 and 6-of-10 of corresponding 2010 Rolex Series GT team championship's top spots, a manufacturer's title and top driver awards, Grand-Am here and there massaged a few rule book words and, viola (Italian for "wah-lah," Menego; ask Max), a "more competitive GT environment" emerged for 2011. Restated: A similar Mazda RX-8 traffic jam atop the GT championship ladder wasn't particularly desired for 2011.

Indeed, Mazda scored only 3-in-5 and 4-in-10 of the final top-10 team championship spots, yet the No. 41 of Cameron and Gué conjured precisely the same fourth-place end of year team championship as had it in 2010.

The third-highest ranked of eight Mazda GT teams in 2010, the Cameron and Gué-led team improved by one spot to finish second best of the eight Mazdas competing in 2011.

Insofar as the 2011 drivers' championship was concerned, Gué and Cameron actually finished one spot better than did Gué and Keen -- fourth vs. fifth, respectively.

Though more occurred behind the scenes than does meet the eye above, walking papers ultimately were handed to a group of otherwise very talented people.

A necessary thing, ego, but never so important that in its maintenance all else should fail.

AIN'T NO WAY!

Honorable Mentions:

For the 2010 Rolex Sports Car Series season Autohaus Motorsports poked its GT nose out of the shop door only five times -- a few as a Pontiac GTO.R; a couple as a Camaro.R -- and finished a best 11th place at the season-ending Tooele, Utah race.

Something good must've happened in the offseason -- perhaps the team acquiring the driving services of Jordan Taylor and Bill Lester -- because the team by the 2011 season's end was leading a tight championship battle having only a five-point spread among the top-3 contenders as the Rolex Series arrived at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

The championship was Autohaus' to lose which, in a gut wrenching single-car spin at Mid-O's wicked, three-turn complex just before pit straight, it did.

Autohaus, Lester and Taylor would lose the team and driving championships by two points, respectively, to Brumos Racing and its drivers, Andrew Davis and Leh Keen.

No matter who; no matter how, it had to hurt, and badly so.

Speaking of First-Year, Championship-Winning Teams . . . They aren't supposed to accomplish as much; "developing" for "next year" usually being the song sung.

Sure, any race team wants to win. A race car driver worth his or her salt truly believes such will happen, in fact.

The reality is that a first-year team has a lot of kinks to shake out and while one might do well here and there, the idea of winning a championship mostly is fodder for jokes and sarcasm because few debuting teams will climb so high as the pinnacle in Year No. 1.

Or, so such is supposed to be and which the Brumos Racing team evidently ignored, never mind altogether disproving in 2011.

Yet, early in 2011 it was a point this writer hardly had considered yielding, especially after the season's third race at Barber Motorsports Park, before which Brumos scored fifth and seventh-place finishes at Daytona International Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway, respectively.

After the Rolex Series had called it a day, Ol' DC remained afterward to watch Friday's final Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge practice from BMP's picturesque Turn 2-3 complex.

Upon its end and a return to the Rolex Series' paddock Ol' DC found himself surprised to be strolling along a string of mostly closed haulers, excepting one.

Parked perpendicular to the team transporter's rear, Brumos Racing's iconic No. 59 Porsche GT3 Cup car sat in the paddock roadway, flanked on the driver's side by a shoulder-to-shoulder Brumos crew that, other than being neatly aligned and handling all manner of pit side essentials, appeared fully prepared to party hardy.

Filling the surrounding air were no fewer than a half-dozen different conversations, from which laughter occasionally arose, nearly all of the assembled crew seemingly oblivious as to the reason for their being there.

A first stab at a pit stop practice lasted all of about 8 seconds before Joe LaJoie called for everyone to get serious and at least try to make good another following attempt.

And another.

All took next-to-forever, according to Ol' DC's stopwatch -- really, it's right there on the watch's face, between "Sometime Today" and "Eternal Damnation" -- and they hadn't even attempted a driver swap.

A couple-more similar record-setting attempts set off Ol' DC's stomach, which commenced growling, "feed me!" and in the pursuit of satiating he proceeded to saunter away.

After Brumos' Saturday race finish of 20th overall and 10th in class it wasn't really too hard to imagine that the team in 2011 would do exactly what so many other teams had done in the past: "prepare" for a following year by "getting experience" and learning where to "improve weak points."

So much for "imagination."

Later,

DC