Speed EuroSeries 2012 Champ Starts Rolex 24 Training

When 2011 Formula 3 and Sunoco Daytona Challenge winner Filipe Nasr (pictured at right) tested his first Daytona Prototype about a year ago at this time at Virginia International Speedway, the rap on the driver after the test was entirely positive.

Then again, it came from Grand-Am public relations . . . (grasp my drift, please, and in a practical sense; they gotta make a buck, too).

This year, with Italian Ivan Bellarosa in an Action Express Racing seat, yours truly just had to be there in person. After all, the Grand-Am boys not only were correct in their assessment of Nasr’s talent at VIR last year, the driver posted a solid, mostly surprising-to-many third place showing in the 50th Rolex 24 At Daytona.

While sharing the glory with the "Best Mostly No-Name Team" in the field – co-drivers named Michael "Malcolm" McDowell, Jorge Andrés Gonçalvez and Gustavo "El Tigrillo" Yacaman – Nasr was the only one among the four to lead the race.

Although yours truly is disinclined to pooh-pooh anyone's ability to drive a race car – such taking for more ability than many believe – the two previous Sunoco Challenge winners hadn’t been of true championship caliber and were hardly of Nasr's league.

Thus, the Sunoco Daytona Challenge had some work to do in overcoming expectations of the talent it was attracting for, well, what truly is a lifetime opportunity and, with Nasr’s “octane” level now proven, the Sunoco Daytona Challenge needed to back it up with another top-shelf driver.

Bellarosa might be accomplishing just that, according to the driver's Rolex 24 At Daytona coach, Max Papis.

Papis (pictured left, with helmet-holding Bellarosa), the reader might recall, made such a name for himself – "Mad Max" – in the 1996 Rolex 24 At Daytona’s waning hours that the event became, as Wayne Taylor once put it, "The only race ever in which a second-place finisher (Papis) is probably better known than the first-place finisher."

Taylor ought to know. He was that first-place finisher.

Of course, Papis in 2002, with Fredy Lienhard, Didier Theys and Mauro Baldi, would win his first Rolex 24 in a Lista/Doran Dallara-Judd and, as “Mad Max Papis,” became a star that easily bridged oceans of many descriptions but, to his fellow countrymen, elevated him to a stature equal to some of Italy’s most famous racing names.

“It is an honor to have met Max,” Bellarosa said. “As a boy I would dream of someday racing in America. To be coached by Max in America; to race in (the) Daytona 24 is more than a dream come true. It is indescribable.”

Papis, of course, believes he can still win another Rolex 24 title, and such accomplishment really shouldn’t surprise anyone, but Papis likely would also believe he could still win a Monaco F1 race, too.

Prior to this week the 37-year-old Italian hadn't previously even visited the United States, so Bellarosa’s English is a little rusty. Papis, as his driving coach, provided a bonus for the Action Express Racing team and this reporter alike inasmuch as Papis speaks Italian, too. Or, at least, so everyone thought when coming into this gig.

"It's amazing how much I've lost the ability to communicate racing terms in Italian," Papis said just after Bellarosa spun his car in a VIR North Course uphill turn from where Papis had chosen to coach, as well as relay, by radio, pertinent information from the pits.

"I'm man enough to accept the blame," Papis jokingly cracked in response to a reporter noticing the, um, coincidence between Papis suggesting Bellarosa loosen a sway bar position and the driver’s subsequent spin.

“Ivan was listening to me just before he spun,” Papis said. “It is something he must get used to hearing, the radio chatter.”

"Europeans don't hear a lot of radio chatter and aren't used to it," Papis said. "While Ivan (pronounced “e-VON”) will be hearing a spotter at Daytona – he will not be telling Ivan how to drive the car, of course – Ivan still must to learn to listen to the radio. So we're introducing bit by bit what Ivan will be exposed to, including the radio chatter."

Bellarosa (pictured at right, probably trying not to hear Max Papis) was getting exposed to a lot of informational chunks, for sure, including when he was to go fast and slow.

"I will tell him that 'from an owner's view' when he's not to go through a turn too quickly, and possibly hurt the car (with an off), and when an owner won't mind him going off because he probably can't hurt it."

For his part, Bellarosa doesn't want to hurt the car, either, so he's taking it in what might be likened to baby steps: careful here; barreling ahead there.

Where he (and Max) is comfortable, it's petal to metal. Where unsure: tiptoe (How many readers remember “Tiny Tim?”).

"I feel I am at 60-percent of my ability," Bellarosa said after completing about 75-percent of his two-day VIR test.

That's 60-percent of his 100-percent ability, he clarified.

(How’d you do with the math? Need help? Get it here.)

"If I wreck the car, we do not have a second car. It will not do me any good," or, roughly translated, "I'll get no seat time whatsoever should the car be irreparably hurt."

"I did not know what to expect. The car was heavier but has more horsepower than my (SPEED) EuroSeries car, so it is quite a difference."

If the record book is any indication, Bellarosa will do well enough: In his 134 professional starts in a range of car types, the driver has scored 34 wins, 42 podiums, 20 poles and 17 fastest race laps. Put another way: If he's in a race car, it has better than a 25-percent chance of victory.

"He is really very good," Papis said, perhaps using himself as the top-rung "bar" by which Bellarosa is measured.

It's not a bad measurement at all, huh?

Later,

DC

 

Ivan Bellarosa images courtesy of Anders Hillenbrand

OF PUMPKINS AND CARRAIGES

TORONTO – Most of those who have won national or international automobile racing championships tend to agree on at least one thing: It ain't easy.

At this time a year ago when Toronto-based AIM Autosport agreed to undertake a larger-than-life responsibility of fielding the Rolex Series' first-ever Ferrari 458 Italia entry, the team's "bar" was set higher than ever before.

Had AIM failed to score a Rolex Sports Car Series championship of any nature with its new Ferrari at the 2012 season's recent end, most everyone in the paddock would've probably pointed to the considerable odds any team faces when fielding a new car, nodding understandably.

A few in the crowd, especially the Italian types from Maranello, would've held a diametric (look it up) point of view.

Why?

AIM Autosport co-owner Andrew Bordin – a winning race car driver in his own right – probably said it best Friday:

"Ferrari isn't a car manufacturer. The whole organization is a race team that sells cars so that it can underwrite its racing. Winning races and championships is something they expect."

AIM Autosport co-owner and chief race-day strategist Ian Willis believes their 2012 Rolex Sports Car Series Grand Touring season, at the end of which the team and drivers Emil Assentato and Jeff Segal actually did reign victorious, expressed his belief that the season went AIM's way chiefly because when things went wrong, they ultimately still went right.

"I call it our 'miracle season,'" Willis insisted Friday, citing two incidents in which the team could've been knocked down and, possibly, altogether out but ultimately prevailed.

"I think the biggest goof of the season was my timekeeping at Watkins Glen (II)," Willis said.

For those in need of memory refreshment: The WGI2 race start wasn't exactly Assentato's finest hour and in which, after receiving the race's first green flag, the driver hurtled headlong into Turn One only to see unexpectedly early braking from the car he followed. (below)

In the perfect world of repeated super slo-mo and "expert opinion" voice-overs from a cranky former race car champion, whatever goes wrong can be put right, even if the result on the track remains the same.

(Oh boy, the email should soon be flowing on that one, Dorsey. And no, Calvin, thoughts of you being cranky and old were the farthest thing from mind, even if true.)

Seen differently is the real world, one in which a split-second decision on the direction for one to suddenly turn a steering wheel after the unerring little voice of physics says, "Uh, 'scuze me, but braking, hard or otherwise, really isn't an option you can exercise just now without considerable repercussion."

Nevertheless, confusion and repercussion followed, during which Willis improperly figured – by 28 seconds – that Assentato had completed the requirements of Grand-Am's rules-mandated 30 min. driver shift.

By the way, Assentato jumped from the No. 69 Ferrari and made like an arrow, flying straight to No. 57 team owner Johnny Stevenson to issue a profuse apology after innocently but still altogether knocking the competitor from the race.

"The 28 seconds was my error," Willis said.

"All heck was breaking loose and I failed to properly monitor the time and told Emil he could exit the car."

Grand-Am officials treated that 28-second transgression exactly as it would've 28 minutes.

"We were in the wrong but I still appealed and, even though I was certain they'd rule against the appeal, they reversed the decision.

"However, I assure you that's a bullet we'll never dodge again," Willis concluded in all seriousness.

Even should he dodge no issue at all, whatever it may be, the repeat of a championship is a tall order, no matter the opinions of the boys back in Maranello, who've experienced a fair share of Victory Lane dry spells over the years.

Insofar as 2013 is concerned, Willis insists the team will do its best to revisit the annual Rolex Series champions' banquet as it had this year, outright taking home the team and driving championships as well as providing a strong points contribution to Ferrari being named the season's top GT manufacturer.

On top of it all, AIM is looking ahead to the 2014 season, too, when ALMS and Grand-Am fully become one under the NASCAR umbrella.

"It's been a wonderful year," Willis said, "I guess one could say it's was a Cinderella-type story."

Ah yes, one of those "miracle" tales, eh!? (Couldn't resist.)

Later,

DC

Most excellent images recorded by one Brian Cleary, a nice Irish-type lad who most everyone likes. For more, visit BCPix.