At The Rolex 24

Nope.

This, the day of the 52^nd Rolex 24, will not be the ol’ infamous picks column by yours truly.

Lessen’ you’re talkin’ of pickin’ a nose.

And for Gawd’s sake, please, please don’t go into gross-out mode because everyone does it. Ev-ery-one. Besides, Larry The Cable Guy (a.k.a. Daniel Lawrence Whitney) wrote a book about taking a crap. Now, talk about “gross.”

This year’s 52nd Rolex 24 At Daytona is one very big race – gridding twice or thrice the number of cars seen in sports car sprint races – and at the end of which any competitor might be victorious over all others (overall), within which a predetermined number of other races along with an undetermined number of personal grudge matches simultaneously end: for whom then comes a trophy for some; great personal satisfaction for many; and, for still others a crushing, almost debilitating defeat.

Looking inward from the outside and when seeing automobile racing as a whole, the uninitiated often think it folly.

Yet, someone within racing, especially those actively involved, surely disagree.

When lives are voluntarily at risk, as they surely are, the activity isn’t and shouldn’t be a foolish one. Skilled craftsman, scarcely found nearly anywhere else today, are at work in race shops across this vast land and in which before a race all but take an actual comb to race car in a search for imperfection because just one, any one can be deadly to more than one driver.

Still, an answer to the question of “Why?” often isn’t easily forthcoming.

Instead of dwelling on the negative, then in order a look at the positives.

At others, especially at Ford – a multifaceted company employing tens-of-thousands that directly and indirectly touches hundreds-of-millions more – the company owes its very existence to a first race car named “Sweepstakes” and which won money that started what we today know as Ford Motor Company.

Racing is a multifaceted activity providing positive results across its chalkboard. From better widgets to improved thingamabobs. Racers can come to a track ready to go racing and win. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t (profound, Williams, profound.)

Some say it’s more to do with marketing than not and, frankly, I won’t disagree. It’s not that Ol’ DC necessarily agrees, it’s just that he really doesn’t care because, after all is said and done, provided to me was entertainment, if not a job, and the great pleasure of meeting and knowing people who for myriad reasons have chosen to challenge self, whether crew, tire changer, driver, engine guy or team owner.

However, if not for Ford, this verbiage would not be here. For it is Ford who pays yours truly a wage which enables him to write this fluffy extracurricular stuff and without Ford’s interference even those in the Ford camp have supplied this scribe with knowledge of things and matters which he may not have otherwise been allowed or able to know.

And, having spoken glowingly of writing, yours truly will now return to that task.

Pushin’ and A-banging

Speaking of teams, owners, drivers, tires changers and associated others, those same folks at Daytona International Speedway are girding for what they see as an imminent 18-hour Crash-A-Thon – anticipating the final six hours as being one of relative tranquility for “no one will be left.”

May the Lord bless and keep ‘em all, but they’re as wrong as a hard rain when there’s just been a flood.

Michael Gue, father of James and of the Tiga (well, co-father at the very least)(of the Tiga) and now of expert eye with respect to inspecting and pricing parts necessary to repair said vehicles having participated to the fullest possible extent in the impending Crash-A-Thon, has probably ordered extra crash materials, that is pencil and paper, so as to record and present said Impending Crash-A-Thon results to one John Gorsline, whose insurance company of nearly the same name has a direct-connect phone to Lloyds of London.

It is safe to say the price of poker has gone up. Seriously so, if only temporarily.

“Why is that,” you say?”

Because everyone, ev-ery-one, up and down the length of pit road, paddock and the luxurious motor homes parked to the immediate east of the “Sprint Cup” garage (hint to DIS Marketing Department: Read contract fine print. It’s quite possible it must only be “Sprint” when the stock car crowd is in town)(then again, nobody reads contracts ‘ceptin’ attorneys, and we all know how poor they be) believe the high banks and corners having proximity thereof will be war zones wherein and upon everyone is gonna tear up the equipment, a.k.a. “wrecked.”

Here is Ol’ DC’s official prediction: Gustavo Yacaman is the only guy anyone need watch. He’s in one of the cars, for sure. He’s been seen at the track.

Yacaman, an official “Junior” copy of the Great South American Columbian rally car driver Gustavo Yacaman (no, everyone in Colombia is not named “Juan Valdez”), isn’t necessarily hell bent on bustin’ anyone, including Memo Rojas at Detroit. It’s just that the Mexicans, of which the latter mentioned racer is one, don’t like Columbians and the Columbians don’t like Mexicans. Methinks there are those who remain shirty after the stalemated Great Mexican-Columbian War of Great Conquest of 1703 or the Great Columbian-Mexican War of Great Conquest of August 1703, the ordering of the title depending on the nationality of whomever first talks of that considerable conflict. Those born of USofA citizenship, that is to say, “You and Me,” mostly never heard of it because we mostly don’t hear of anything or, perhaps, retain what we are told outside of Gray’s Anatomy or similar.

What’s the Great Mexican-Columbian War of Considerable Conquest of 1703 or the Great Columbian-Mexican War of Considerable Conquest of 1703 got to do with anything? Hell, I don’t know but the deal is, “It might.”

Now, both of the Yacaman racers were and are fast. Inasmuch as he no longer rallies, he elder Yacaman probably drives fast on the civilian streets but he is known to be fast when just standing still because Ol’ DC is plagued with poor accomplishment in understanding his Spanish. Señior Yacaman can afford a translator, Ol’ DC fakes his knowing Spanish, Arabian, French and a few others. I’d next like to fake Rooskie, of which the Media Center has one, maybe two who are here to cover still more Rooskies in the pits. But that’s another story for another day.

Insofar as Gustavo The Junior is concerned: people misunderstand him. He’s very fast, too, and as a result tends to stick his nose where no one expects him. They crunch and, given the right set of circumstances we’re back to Michael Gue and John Gorsline; the former using a magical formula to figure dollar amounts conveyed to the latter who then calls Lloyds of London, the insurer of practice. Somehow, all maintain a straight face during the process.

There are so many people so doggone sure that wrecks galore will occur that everyone’s gonna be looking for wrecks and they just ain’t gonna see them to the degree expected. It’s an inverse proportionality.

In the meantime, the guy who hauls the mail in semi-circular fashion will either be a rabbit or the winner with a new record or two.

Speaking of Pushing and Shoving

Saturday’s clean-up crews did a marvelous job once cut loose, but the yellow flag to green flag process drew a lot of criticism Friday evening following the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge.

“It appears it was all about the process,” one knowledgeable racing type said. “Should the same be done during the Rolex 24, you’ll have people turning off the TV and walking out of the stands as a result.”

Helton, Mike Helton

Before being kicked from a seat occupied for as long as the Daytona International Speedway’s Media Center has existed, your lovable journalist in 2014 had twice seen NASCAR president Mike Helton enter the room, walk for 20 ft., sit on the ledge of a permanent camera platform and listen as others held sway over the roomful of reporters, journalists and people on hand for whatever reason they are on hand.

What’s odd about it, if anything? Mike Helton, who was recognized by at least half if not more of those in the room, wasn’t mobbed. Just move his earlier mentioned movements ahead by a couple or three weeks and get him shuffling around in a media room for Speedweeks and what’ll you get? A mob scene. Scrambling reporters, whose numbers start with an even dozen, all holding extended arms at the end of end of which are tiny machines with red lights aglow and awaiting, breathlessly so, Mr. Helton’s next words, if only to then hear there is “nothing new.”

If anything is to be taken from this, it’s not that a world-leading motorsports sanctioning body leader is ignored as much as he is thought irrelevant to those on hand. Yet, Helton is relevant and to think otherwise seems a mistake for, like it or not, NASCAR is IMSA’s guiding light. There are things brewing. The likes of which have already been placed in the public arena, some recently, some not so, but for which to be seen one must look, hear, listen and ask.

And yet, perhaps there’s no better way for a non-sports-car guy to come to understand what constitutes the difference between sports car and stock-car mentalities, both of whom either find or have found joy in the process of making money but one of which was able to bring it to the car-racing dance – then throw it away.

Now, back to THE 24.

Later,

DC

This Is Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH – (02 Jan., 2014) – Simply known for decades as an unimaginative but highly descriptive “Test Days,” it was a long time before someone from marketing conjured “The Roar Before The 24.”

Whatever the name, it is the one annual event when racers from around the world gather: racers who may or may not be actually racing; racers who are looking to see and be seen; still other racers who hope more than anything else to rekindle friendships once broken by racing’s vagaries and demands with still others hoping for one more paycheck of the kind that once came as easily and as steadily as the sun’s rising in the east but which have gone away as quickly when the lifestyle sunk like the sun in the western horizon.

It is a place where someone like 2012 Indy 500 and 2008 Rolex 24 winner Dario Franchitti, forcibly retired before 2013’s end by a broken body doctors said they could no more mend, tottered (the latter part of "teeter") on crutches supporting healing limbs as he made his way through the paddock Thursday, yet again speaking and laughing with those against whom he formerly wished no worse than to embarrassingly best at the end of a contest of men and machines.

With Daytona International Speedway’s Sprint Cup and Nationwide garages as full of sports cars as any can recently recall, 66 Rolex 24 cars are on hand at the monster track through Sunday, all hoping to find that fastest line through a once bedeviling turn or establish a fastest speed for the entire 3.56-mile track.

Still others are hoping to capture enough drivers, thus perhaps money, too, to offset 24 hours of gas and tire bills, the latter's cost for some alone approaching a small house’s value.

Five-time Rolex 24 At Daytona winning driver Scott Pruett has reached a point where awaiting the Jan. 25-26 race “is darn near unbearable,” said he.

“I can’t wait to get this show on the road,” the driver said during Thursday’s “move-in” day, during which team haulers disgorge a seemingly unending stream of still-smaller, usually people-powered trailers that carry everything from basic supplies to complex tools used during the two days and one evening of testing undertaken by the teams. A test session, by the way, which will not remotely come close to duplicating the number of miles - something on the order of 2,500-or-more - that the race itself will see come its checker-flagged end on Sunday, Jan. 26.

Yet at this Rolex 24 At Daytona, the 52nd such example, much will rest upon the new shoulders of the Tudor United Sports Car Championship (“tusk,” phonetically speaking) as gone this year is the race’s sanctioning body of the past 14 years, the Grand American Road Racing Association, and a nemesis as well, the American Le Mans Series which, of course, looked upon the former with the same alacrity as did it see the latter ("Will the circle be unbroken, bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye . . ."

Working in its stead is the newly forged United SportsCar Championship - a name derived from a fan-naming contest whose submitter focused upon what has not been since deep into the preceding century: a split sports car racing series that apparently to all concerned was doing no good at all.

Getting rarer now are those who once wished to grow up and be a “race car driver” but who could only be such because there are, probably always will be race teams willing to trade souls for money. Besides, a race team absent of a race car is no race team at all, for ‘tis better to at least partly pretend one is a race team and eat than not a race team at all.

Also gone with the stroke of a pen and massive money transfers are the long-distance squabbles and snipes as to which race organization was the “real” sports car racing authority and which possessed the better racing real estate, replaced now by the usual petty envy and quarrels as to who has the better office and who proudly best sucks up to those holding the supreme authority.

Remembering that it takes two to tango or, as was the case in this matter, not dancing at all, the former other member in this affair was the American Le Mans Series, whose aging founding father, Dr. Don Panoz was rumored to be the last in his family to be remotely interested in owning a sports car racing series that at times so struggled to field enough cars that even a “run whatever you brung” class was once given serious consideration.

Arising yet again as would a phoenix (no, Darren, not the city) from the ruins is yet another International Motor Sports Association that in the grand scheme, if not precise practice, is The Third and therefore distilled becomes IMSA v. 3.o.

Would-be detractors howl at the indignity of what has become of what had been before, whether unwittingly or ignorantly, all the while conveniently perpetuating an incorrect history that all too often entirely omits IMSA as actually having come home, for it was Big Bill France who in the late 1960's telephoned John Bishop and said, "The time is right in America for professional sports car racing" and then made certain the newborn was funded.

This one race, this Rolex 24 At Daytona, is unique in a world of racing that in Daytona Beach began over 100 years ago in the simplest of fashion: One kid, in heart if not of age, challenging yet another of similar constitution, to determine the fleetest of foot or fastest self upon beach sand not too far removed from the 3.56-mile asphalt ribbon that is as much a part of sports car racing heritage as is a once-unique Trioval to stock cars and beneath which the whole of Florida was one day long, long ago built.

No matter who when first seeing this hallowed ground, and it truly is that, the most talented of fender benders speak in reverent hushed tones no different than the best of those whose feigns and fakes leave a competitor dumbfounded and tongue tied.

This is Daytona.