Okay.

It’s time.

Just what the hellfire is a-going-on here!?

There’s a man with a plan over there . . . as well as there, there and assuredly there.

And I’m telling you, it’s one that’s certainly got me aware. (With a considerable apology owed to one Steven Stills, a Gainesville type who in his freshman year assuredly knew what and where he was going with his career, even if others, especially blood kin, thought him crazy, if not just plain lazy.)

But “of what?” What has me aware?

There’s nothing written that a plan must be something of which everyone is aware. And there’s supposed to be at least one there, somewhere.

Indeed, insofar as your faithful, even if now-only-occasional scribe is aware, a plan’s purpose need only be completely known but to one. That no one else at all may, must know or have imagined anything at all is not a given. It’s darn sure not demanded.

Heard now is someone claiming or demanding knowledge of the plan.

Hasn't made, didn't make a hill-of-beans' difference, did it now?

In war, those things which become suddenly, glaringly and even explosively evident are often called “surprise attacks” . . . and for good reason.

And such has not to be a very, um, “wonderful” surprise, at that, often isn't to those who are the least prepared for its reveal.

Isn't it curious that a “surprise” can be both pleasant and not, depending on perspective; all boiling down to the “side of a fence” on which one stands?

Yet, in another regard, well, one can do without a surprise. Huh?

Okay. Let’s get along to a tangential subject of late: "megalomania."

With credit due to Merriam and-everyone-knows Webster:

“meg-a-lo-ma-nia”

“: a mania for great or grandiose performance

: a delusional mental disorder that is marked by feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur.”

Well, if that don’t seem confused, then what might?

“Grandiose” kinda has been a favorite of mine but for reasons likely foreign to others: “gladiolas.” That’s right: “Down the aisle a bit; just on the other side of the petunias you'll find the grandioses" . . . or something like that.

Okay, so let’s give “mania” a whack (again crediting Merriam and-everyone-knows Webster):

“ma·nia"

": excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood ; specifically : the manic phase of bipolar disorder

: excessive or unreasonable enthusiasm —often used in combination”

Well, we all certainly know of at least one member of the paddock disposed of said “hyperactivity,” although it seems Merriam and-everyone-knows Webster get a little weak when used in an explanation is a derivative word of the one being defined: manic and mania, respectively.

I mean, can’t one just say, “crazy?” Such is certainly not to say that mania necessarily is crazy, it’s just that if one is looking to cut to the chase, “crazy” pretty well does it. 

Right?

Well, for what it’s worth (get it, right?), seen upfront and personal just a couple or three days ago was the fella who’s supposed to be more disposed of it than anyone else at all. Megalomania, that is.

Well, clearly a Professor Irwin Corey he's not.

Yet now confused only further still, one can’t help but wonder: Just what in hellfire is a-going-on here!?

Frankly, it’s doubtful there has ever been a time when more uncertain is the future than this time. Don’t you think?

It is a time when, say, 18 months ago everyone would've been thought by now to be in-sync yet, at least to your not-really-humble-at-all scribe, we’re talking “dysfunctional” now occurring (preferred from this perspective is “getting down”) at a level that few have previously seen.

It feels so whacked that not unexpected are a left turn, right turn, sudden deceleration and acceleration all occurring simultaneously at the next green flag’s drop - and all by Pruett, alone. Got another maneuver to drop in there? Go for it. Hell, if anyone can, Pruett's the one.

May as well. Drop in another there, after all.

Unsure for darn sure is the plan or, perhaps, even the man supposedly with that plan.

What a time to be alive! When one can't help but see a great mystery unfold (or might that be unravel?) before one's very eyes!

Later,

DC

LIT-UHL BRUTHER DOES IT

In most families for most of the time an odd dynamic exists between older and younger siblings: The one somehow feels compelled to outdo the other.

On the one hand, an older brother or sister somehow believes he or she must “lead” by example while a younger brother or sister somehow believes it necessary to outshine that older brother or sister so as to “prove” oneself.

A little brother or sister can be, often will be “out-shined” by an older sibling whether by intent or circumstance and, many times, that “intent” originates with parents pitting one against the other at the earliest of ages.

And an older sibling may not have at all asked for that competition; they just happened to “be there” at the time.

Many older siblings have no clue of any “competition” and yet occurring at some very odd moment are damned for its existence. Indeed, once discovered they might not, probably do not even want that competition’s existence.

It can be among nature’s most vicious cycles . . . for there exists a very, very fine line between love and hate.

Ask Cain and Abel.

Okey-dokey, then; Look ‘em up should the reader be unable to “channel” (no, Menendez, not the cable box).

Alternatively, ask Rick and Jordan Taylor.

(By the way, as a dear friend nick-named “Rick” long ago advised after this correspondent misaddressed an envelope to a more formalized but nonetheless misperceived “Richard”: “My name is ‘Frederick.’” So then, what IS “Ricky” Taylor’s proper given name? Is there any such similar question asked of Jordan?)

How about Brian and Burt Frisselle? (And what the heck is a “Burt,” anyway? But we don’t ask that about Brian’s name, huh?)

Hugh and Matt Plumb? (The pair likewise score on the secondary question, too.)

All of the above, sans Cain and Abel (even though the two likely raced camels), are brothers in motorsports – and elsewhere, too.

Then, there are George Dario Marino Franchitti and Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti.

In the brotherly pair’s racing existence, Dario’s scored 34 overall wins; Marino, 3.

Of course Marino has “won” more than three times; one needn't dig any farther into history than the 2013 Mobil 1 Sebring 12 Hours to ascertain such. Still, history shows his Level 5 LMP2 “win” came in a secondary class – if one digs deep enough. But outside of that, the Level 5 team is shown as having finished just one position better than at which it qualified: 6th vs. 7th, respectively.

Question: With overall victories in mind, is Dario 11.1333 times better than Marino?

How about “wins vs. attempts?” Dario = 1 in 12.12; Marino 1 in 43.3.

While probable that this writer’s available data may have a hole or two, when existing for analysis are 400 and 130 races for Franchitti and Franchitti, respectively, it’s doubtful a differential of great proportion would exist in the final product.

So then, an old question – as old as Cain and Abel – begs revisiting: Did George Dario Marino Franchitti discernibly exceed the abilities of Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti, thus gaining access in quantity and quality to teams, equipment, engines, chassis, tires, engineers and really cool steering wheels?

Or did the younger sibling, Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti, suffer a dearth of rides just because he was the younger brother riding some coattails?

Years ago at Daytona International Speedway in the garages located behind the Daytona 500 Club, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, his bride, Lounette, and your humble servant were chatting during a “historic” weekend.

Unexpectedly joining us were George Dario Marino Franchitti, fabulously well-known spouse, Ashley George Dario Marino Franchitti Judd, and a third party whose bald head, when within a couple or three feet, clearly was such largely by genetic design and partially due to a razor’s edge. Introduced to this conversant only as “Marino,” the only patently obvious thing was his hangin’ with Barry Green’s best-yet driver and that driver’s newlywed spouse. Ain't nothin’ new; life’s “third wheels.”

Later in the day and in the same garage from which, it seemed, Ashley George Dario Marino Franchitti Judd didn't seem enamored of vacating (at least, not until “closing time”), George Dario Marino Franchitti would explain Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti is, indeed, his “lit-uhl” brother and that he, Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti, was hoping to get a stateside ride for the following season after a poor Petite Le Mans during the preceding October.

“Ah, so that’s it,” Ol’ DC says to Ol’ DC. “Big brother - big more-successful brother - is gonna help find kid brother a ride.”

Yep, yours truly did it, too, sorry to say.

And that’s the way Ol’ DC tended to think of Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti for too many years to follow.

That is, until Saturday, March 15 at, oh, roughly 10:15 p.m. (22:15 hours) EDT, in a little south-central Florida town whose karma is utterly destroyed many times over whence comes the annual Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring.

(The Sebring-area residents are probably much like Daytona Beach’s: It’s largely a welcomed event should one have been raised in the area; not so had someone originated elsewhere. Multi-generational Floridians have a name for such folk, who ride into town and tell us how to do things: “Carpetbaggers.”)

(Still, small isolated Florida towns and cities tend to be insular in thought and morality, though I’m certain the Sebring I knew as a kid no longer is as, um, narrow as once might’ve been the case. However, all that is another story for another type of publication, some day. Not here. Not today.)

Actually, awareness of Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti’s ability probably came a little before that, at say 10:13 p.m. EDT. But whenever it came, come it did.

Flatly: Marino Franchitti could've blown winning – outright – the Mobil 1 62nd 12 Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida but didn't.

He could've missed his turn-in, apex and track-out marks, but didn't
.
On the final restart he could've failed to have a properly selected gear, but didn't.

He could've stalled the 3.5-litre, 24-valve, twin-turbocharged Ford EcoBoost engine but didn't.

He could've mistaken “blow” for “go,” but didn't.

He just didn’t do a lot of things wrong when he darn well could've done any one thing wrong and become a goat of massive proportion.

Actually, there are worthy other contenders for race-win honors; among them Ganassi team Director Mike O'Gara.

O'Gara was part of the original Chip Ganassi Racing Grand-Am Rolex Series onslaught (at first done without Felix Sabates, but corrected retroactively before the season was done) in 2004.

Between sometime in 2005, when O'Gara split in his return to open-wheel racing, and March of this year, Tim Keene was Ganassi's Numero Uno on-site guy.

In a pre-Sebring shocker, Keene turned in his keys to the shop. No matter the reason: Keene had played the game pretty darn good. Keene brought home a boatload of wins, championships and walked after having steered the No. 01 Telcel nee Telmex teams to a string of racing records that’ll be around for a long, long time to come.

No matter the reason, O'Gara had some serious shoe-filling to undertake when he returned to the sports car helm at Sebring. In the time he’d been away the team had managed to do some serious derriere kicking and Chip Ganassi isn't exactly fond of the word “retreat!”

Thus, at just after the 11th hour of the 12-hour race there were more than a few folks who thought O'Gara managed to slip on a pair of dancing shoes – as in that which he would wear when he, too, waltzed into the daytime air for the last time through Ganassi's Woodland Drive, Indianapolis shop doors.

This scribe was among those who thought O'Gara unlikely to return to Sebring. So much so, yours truly even ordered some dancing wax to spread on the front sidewalk at the Target Chip Ganassi building because at Sebring, O'Gara had at his disposal a couple of driving superstars who in 2014 were to the No. 01 TelCel Ford EcoBoost Riley as Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt were to the No. 1 Ford GT40 MkIV in 1967.

In general, the more incredulous among the observers wondered not so much how Memo Rojas or Scott Pruett could win as much as how either of that pair could possibly lose in a car they've together called their racing home since 2007.

Pruett, easily one of the more underrated drivers in modern times, rarely screws up. He certainly can and has certainly done so, but such is rare. Very rare. If there was anyone who is steadfast in manor and upon whom can be counted in pressure situations, it’s Pruett. He’s proved such time and again.

For a guy who at first in 2007 appeared little more than your standard accomplished bumbler – and thereby providing fuel for bigoted types – Rojas has not throw away what amounted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from a master and well suffered that tutelage. From a youngster who could mash the gas and go with abandon (and did), Rojas under Pruett has matured into another steadfast driver who can be counted upon, not counted out.

If Pruett and Rojas are considered a couple, O'Gara went for the car’s third wheel, the odd man out who’ll really be “out” when time comes for the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship sprint-race schedule. He might even be “out” when time comes for The Glen’s 6-hour race, if the Ganassi team’s past tendencies are taken into consideration and followed.

On the other hand, Marino Franchitti, that “little brother to Dario Franchitti,” should no longer need that extra weight appended to his name, for Marino Franchitti demonstrated he has what it takes to be a champion, at least to this race watcher.

When that last green flag was waved with about 20 minutes remaining in the race, there were all sorts of things that could've gone wrong . . .  but didn’t.

With recorder in hand as Marino Franchitti climbed from the No. 01 TelCel Ford EcoBoost Riley DP at race end, asked if he was nervous in that final 20-minute sprint to the checkered flag, he coolly answered, “No, not at all. All I had to do was hit my marks. That’s what I am paid to do.”

And then he went to celebrate with his new-found friends: the entire Ganassi organization, Ford Racing and, hopefully, a full-time ride wherever it may be – as long as it’s first-rate so the man can win a championship in his own right.

Later,

DC

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.

TIME HAS COME TODAY

Some folks have recently inquired . . . check that . . . a surprising number of folks (for which this hack is very grateful) have wondered aloud, some repeatedly (thanks, JJ and MG and JM and IM and BM and . . .), as to why Cold Pit has gone, um, “cold.”

My response to each is the same as that which has been repeatedly employed: There wasn’t much of anything about which to write. Well, there was that white lie told to JJ (notice how one can choose the colors of his lies?) that a certain facebook account is where one might find “warmer” and newer words instead of the now gone ColdPit blog. By the way (in a little personal message, here. So if you’ll please excuse us . . .) it isn’t really gone, JJ. It’s just that you wouldn’t have believed yours truly had no words to write, when I really didn’t!

(And should anyone get all agog over the use of a lowercase “facebook,” suggested then is a peek at one’s upper-left corner whilst visiting facebook, which evidently feels that should an organization’s all-caps moniker get printed, then so, too, should an alphabetical counterpart.

More recently, instead of grousing about there being little of substantive nature about which to write, this writer instead has been inclined to use metaphor, such as: “The middle of North American sports car racing has recently been like that of someone standing in a 7-ft. dinghy while in the midst of 20-ft. seas.”

Put a different way: Confusion and uncertainty now reigns in North American sports car racing.

Oh, the upper echelon of the new, um, “lon” (?) is trying hard, though there are plenty of people, a “majority” is what might claim, who know not what these people are doing with the investments originally made and currently carried by team owners.

“They’ll have these get-togethers for which advertised is information disbursement but during which the only thing actually seen is a thorough patting upon their respective backs,” say a composite of the chieftains made whilst standing aside cars which represent millions of dollars in a business that is, for the most part, controlled by others.

That they have little control over their own fortunes is not an easy pill to swallow for team owners who are accustomed to determining their own diagnosis and the medicine necessary for countering what ails them, now becoming especially concerned for those who are dependent on the team owners taking the right treatment so that everyone safely awakens where each seek to be, financially.

One can only wonder what the paddock’s topmost control freak - the control freak of control freaks - is doing to calm himself while awaiting results from what the efforts of others, minions all, are doing to a series he personally built from ground upward.

It must be pure hell.

Indeed, and in fact, it’s also pure hell for that team’s crew members - and not just from their “master’s” increased anxiousness, either. Some of these, um, scum-of-the-earth, greasy over-the-wall types are themselves captains of industry, whether situated in major metropolitan areas or guiding their own little “industry” back in Hometown, USA. What they aren’t lacking is smarts, many having educations that few would come close to imagining, with advanced degrees in business, scientific, medical and engineering fields, judicial and many other fields – all of whom are gladly taking vacations, an event at a time, and who need to know the when and where of a following season because they really have need of planning that far in advance.

It sometimes can’t help but be wondered if series’ administrators know the credentials of those who they readily pass when strolling along almost any pit lane in sports car racing.

Indeed, it’s doubtful anyone who labors at all in the paddock is absent of apprehension over a future which is now being built more by those responsible for building the new series than anyone or anything else.

While it’s easy to think one could or should easily “chill,” such really is doubtful when someone has little clue – other than repeatedly saying, nay, chanting – much as did Little Miss Dorothy and her ruby red heels – “There’ll be a season next year; There’ll be a season next year; There’ll be a season next year” – when the bosses are responsible not only to crews – many if not most being as close to family as one can get absent of matching DNA – as well as, sometimes, stockholders and boards of directors for the haulers, shops, equipment, supplies, race cars and whatever else whose assets easily number in the millions of dollars for each team, regardless of team.

When seen at each race in the media center is worry etched into the faces of those who labor over a keyboard or whose vision has been fouled by one eye constantly seeing something through a telescopic lens, it doesn’t take long to learn of that person’s angst over the following season and whether he or she will have anything at all to do with it.

In fact, inflaming the worry over prospective change and uncertainty are the loss of jobs by those who presently don’t know how or where a lost income will be replaced. Furthermore, rarely paid in the world of racing journalism is severance, which is about as rare as jobs are today. Yet, if one is inclined toward and thinks highly of people who truly hustle for a living, look no farther than a media center. It’s full of ‘em.

Believe: Concern about having jobs or fulfilling roles while away from jobs is an honest-to-goodness issue at a time when the U.S. is experiencing the worst, longest-lasting, so-called “recovery” (should one dare call it that) since World War II.

There is now at least a couple of teams – race- or even championship-winning teams at that – which for the 2014 season felt there was no choice but to shelve respective plans to step up a racing-class grade or, maybe, two because timely information was lacking in its arrival.

To be somewhat fair in this litany of negativism by a self-admitted, at-this-moment “nabob” (ask your grandfather), the bringing together of two sanctioning bodies, or companies for all that’s worth, isn’t an easy task. Indeed, the process likely is more difficult than is quarterbacking a professional football team (no, unlike others, I will not grant the use of “NFL” as sufficient in conveying the idea of professional football. After all, there’s the Lingerie League, the games of which grab this armchair quarterback’s rapt attention rather quickly, despite his state of rapid overall decline).

As tough as it has been for this observer to see any member of this racing family walk through the gate for a last time – even those with whom this writer disagreed, because they have families, too – it’s probably pretty easy to grasp how uncomfortable it must be to fire someone. Especially if that “someone” is an otherwise likeable sort.

Now, multiply “firing” many, many times over. It hurts on both sides.

No, laying unclaimed by this writer is any hint at all of the “ease” experienced by those who’ve taken IMSA, versions 1.998 – 2.013, and Grand-Am apart, examined the many pieces and duplicates in each, then started reassembling them as IMSA ver. 3.0.

Not gonna go there at all; there being a lot on the plates of those having to divine the proper 2014-and-beyond path for professional sports car racing.

Still, there are a whole bunch of wound-up souls who need to know how the 2014 International Sports Car Racing series will function, from top to bottom . . .

Like yesterday.

Later,

DC

Burt and Brian Frisselle Do Kansas Speedway

TOM'S BIG DAY

NEW YORK CITY! (26Mar2013) - I know, I know, it's only taken me about six months to think of this angle, but does anyone else find it curious or just "coincidental" that descendants of the former Axis Powers-That-Be are again joining together. (That would be Germany and Japan, Menendez.)

Of course, those two are tonight joining with a former arch enemy, U.S.-based IMSA, er, Grand-Am . . . naw, let's just do what's right and go with "IMSA" from here-on-out; might as well get used to it considering "IMSA" evidently will never go away. (Okay by me.)

It's a deal now a little better than two years in the making or, maybe three. Somewhere in there. Knowing that telephone bills are records so solid that law enforcement communities nationwide salivate at the mere mention of the idea, yours truly could exactly ascertain when called was Grand-Am immediate past president Tom Bledsoe and he happened to be in Italy on "business," his having been in Spain just the day previous, and so on . . .

Bledsoe still was the organization's potentate (the "grand potentate" being, well, you know who), who happened at that moment to be answering his cell phone when it was something like 2 a.m. IT ((Italy Time, Menendez)).

Now, Mr. Bledsoe having demanded (commanded?) an Off The Record ("OTR," Menendez) chat agreement just after the point in time when he said, "Hello, DC" upon answering his cell phone, little was subsequently seen on paper or in blogs excepting a hint here and there.

When Bledsoe surrendered his title to Mr. Ed Bennett - who since has done one whale of a better job than Bledsoe (er, just kidding, there, Tom.)(No I wasn't, Ed) - asked afterward of Mr. Bledsoe by yours truly during one of our quiet moments of solitude together was, "So, now that you're heading for the over-50-only The Villages (Florida) community, Tom, what's to become of the DTM thing."

"I ain't gonna let that sucker go untill'in' I get that sucker nailed on down," - or something of that nature, though it is believed Bledsoe used a few more $50 words than the above. Not many; but a few.

At the time, most in the racing community didn't know much about Bledsoe; some thinking he got the potentate job due to he and Jim France being related by blood.

It was a "blood" relationship based on coincidental logic (should such even exist) and having extrapolated that relationship based only on Bledsoe's surname and "Anne B." France's* maiden name being the same in spelling, suddenly his being there was "a family thing, you know," when it was nothing of the sort.

*(Anne France, who died Jan. 2, 1992, is the mother of Jim France and his late brother, Bill France Jr. She is the grandmother of JC and Brian France, as well as Lesa F. Kennedy and still other family members who aren't as publicly prominent as the aforementioned.

(As Big Bill France's capable business partner, Anne France oversaw NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation's front office from the now-separate organizations' earliest days. Indeed, she even sat in ticket booths, exchanging money for race tickets. Man, these folks weren't always wealthy beyond mere mortals' beliefs - they actually worked for it.

(Which begs a question: All things considered, might the more preferable be a welfare recipient or a person who happened to love what he or she did and made some serious money while doing it?

(While Big Bill and "Annie B" may have hoped for wealth beyond the wildest of dreams, be assured there were times when the family could hardly rub together just two nickels between the four of them.)

(So, what's it gonna be: welfare money - the original intent of which was to provide basic sustenance until the recipient was able to again provide for themselves - or someone who said, "No thanks, I'll just do it on my own" and, because he loved it, made some darn good change in the process?)

Okay, where were we before the soapbox appeared? Ah, yes: Mr. Bledsoe and DTM.

So, while Mr. Bennett was pursuing knowledge of the strange thinking processes found within these "alien" race car owners, teams, drivers, officials and fans -- otherwise known as sportscar types -- Mr. Bledsoe was out chasing one of his dreams: bringing DTM to the U.S. under Grand-Am's auspices.

Eventually, Bledsoe's pursuit would include a suddenly interjected Japanese-based Super GT Sports Car series, too, which was kinda, sorta self-wedged into the process about a year after the whole DTM deal first started smoking and, last fall, announced those two series' forming a joint pursuit of rules, races and etc. At the time, one got the feeling "that was that." Only, it wasn't.

The impetus for DTM and, eventually, Super GT getting in touch with Grand-Am and, dare we be so bold, those entities eventually joining?

Forcing the issue was the cost of racing and the want of containing such - yep, you read correctly - because even DTM and Super GT couldn't afford the series' owners and manufacturers (yep, them, too) not being able to afford the cost of racing. That being the case, then how in heck could a team afford something that the manufacturers and series' owners couldn't afford? If no one was able to afford racing, no fan could, either - or, at least, the bulk of them.

With a mindset bent on controlling costs and before anyone could seven-times say, "Super GT Sports Car series," DTM called the one professional sports car sanctioning body that had the best, most effective in-place cost controls: Grand-Am.

And it all culminates with tonight's New York City announcement - yours truly not even remotely wishing to miss personally seeing Bledsoe's crowning achievement (before he moves to The Villages, finally).

Without getting too emotionally involved, Bledsoe wasn't really much different than anyone who has been successful: He started with an idea, put so much work into it that even when he "retired" he really didn't, and got it done.

Congratulations, Tom. Very cool.

Later,

DC

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORSEY SCHROEDER!

On May 31, 1986, rookie driver Dorsey Schroeder won his first IMSA race at Road Atlanta.

Schroeder's second win, coming just four races later at Lime Rock Park, Terry Lee Earwood did not at some point jump into the car, either. Nor was the co-driver his winning partner from the first race, Larry Huff.

By Dorsey Schroeder's third win, gone was the guy, Paul Tosi, with whom he scored a second win.

Confused? Evidently so was Dorsey Schroeder . . . or he just flat-out didn't like anyone, even if they did help him win.

Scored only 11 days shy of his first IMSA Firestone Firehawk Series win, Steve "Younga" DeBrecht was the next dude what shared driving duties with Schroeder. (Yes, yes, I know, the preceding "what" placement freaks English/journalism teachers everywhere, but Dorsey seems to better grasp a sentence, any sentence at all, if it contains "what.")

Indeed, it was in IMSA-rookie Schroeder's third Firestone Firehawk Series race, coincidentally Schroeder's third IMSA Firestone Firehawk series race (think about it) -- The Seagram's Cooler 24-Hour at Watkins Glen -- that he'd pair with first-win co-driver Huff; second-win co-driver Tosi, and, finally, no-win Earwood (at least with Schroeder).

Something was amiss; the four-driver team finished 15th and, as was the man that he is, Schroeder stepped up and took absolutely no responsibility, pointing the fickle finger of fate directly at Earwood. Or so it is said herein.

Accordingly, the two -- Schroeder and Earwood -- are besttest buddies to this very day or, maybe, yesterday. Nevertheless: “go figure.”

Schroeder, who for some oblique reason didn't exactly cop a whole bunch of IMSA Firestone Firehawk Series seat time in 1987, at least won (with "Younga" DeBrecht) in the only race Schroeder entered that year.

Having in 1987 blazed a trail unlike any scorched by anyone beforehand, Schroeder without a doubt was ready to roll when the first race of 1988 came 'round, jumping up and into an IMSA GTU Dodge Daytona ride, fielded by (what else?) "Full Time Racing."

Having qualified 66th, the team (Schroeder, Phil Currin and Kal Showket) completed but 62 of the eventual winner's 728 laps around the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course.

The team's No. 00 Dodge Daytona was officially retired as the result of a "spin" -- which evidently must've placed somewhere on the meter between "mind-blowing hallucinogenic" and "Depends" -- finished 71st of the 75 cars what started that year's SunBank 24 At Daytona.

It was later rumoured among two people that eventual race victors Martin Brundle, Raul Boesel and John Nielsen had to change their No. 60 Jaguar XJR-9's nosepiece that supposedly may have made short work of Full Time. (TWR team manager Tony Dowe, God love his pea-picking heart because Morris Nunn doesn't, is off in Australia the last time I heard and kinda hard to reach in the Aboriginal regions where he's gone to hide . . . or something like that).

Having redemption on his mind some six-weeks later at the famed 12-Hours of Sebring, Bruce MacInnes joined Schroeder and Full Time for a 25-lap-long romp around a 4.11-mile road course upon which Hans Joachim Stuck and Klaus Ludwig won about 11-hours later in Bruce Leven's "Bayside Disposal" (Q: "How's the trash business?" A: "Picking up.") Porsche 962-121.

Interestingly, of the 65 cars that, (oops) what started the race, Schroeder and MacInnes finished 61st. One car ahead in 60th place was the No. 60 Jag XJR-9 of, you guessed it, Martin Brundle, John Nielsen and Raul Boesel.

Just a coincidence or is it the foretelling of a Mayan Apocalyptic tragedy set for 21 December 2012? You be the judge.

The International Motor Sports Association was at the tail-end of its heyday and Schroeder, try as he may, darn sure didn't ride it as well as he might have or, even, could have.

In Sept. 1988, Schroeder scored a fourth professional win, his second Lime Rock Park win and the last of the 1988 season.

Yet, over the last four or five races of that '88 season a trend of sorts developed wherein Schroeder would, often did start at a field's rear only to capture a top-10 or top-5 finish.

One particular odd distinction arose to distinguish between Schroeder having a very good finish and a not-so-good finish: put Schroeder in a single-class race and he'd darn near wipe the floor.

Evidently somebody over at Jack Roush saw something in Schroeder that year. Who knows what was seen? Indeed, many still wonder to this day. Whatever it may have been, Schroeder suddenly was thrust into The Bigs of GT racing.

In the early 1980's Ford chose Roush and team to put the carmaker out front in Trans-Am racing.

Driving talent including the likes of Tom Gloy, Wally Dallenbach Jr., Willy T Ribbs and Scott Pruett (anyone see him lately; wonder what Pruett's doing nowadays?) quite capably ran Mercury Capri V8s and Merkur XR4Ti turbocharged 4-cyl., the former carrying Ford to manufacturer titles in 1984 and 1985, with Dallenbach taking driving honors in 1985 (though Willy T won more races and led the end-of-year money list, Dallenbach scored a higher average finish and won the driving title; followed with another in 1986).

After Pruett won the title in 1987, Hurley Haywood in an Audi Quattro took it away in 1988.

1989 was a hallmark year for Ford, and it was intending to send out a lot of 'em, too. But plainly, it needed a superdriver to step from the ranks and found it in an unlikely source: a four-race winner coming from what many saw as a bush-league, junior-league series.

Yet, Dorsey Schroeder drove his Roush Mustang as though he was being chased -- but by “what: isn’t immediately obvious because many people even today will say it was and still is "inner demons" that pushed Schroeder to car-racing's pinnacle and alternately gashed his leg on a dock as recently as 2012.

Whatever, ahem, "drove" certainly succeeded.

After IMSA GT tune-up races in the SunBank 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, in which Schroder and Dallenbach were joined by NASCAR star Mark Martin in Daytona for a 2nd-place finish and scored a GT-class win in the second, Schroeder opened his first-ever SCCA campaign with a sixth at Long Beach, a second at Sears Point (Sonoma; Infineon) and then he started rolling, er, actually, "steam-rolling" might be more appropriate.

One at times wonders if race car drivers remember their "first," or perhaps even a "second first" or, going all the way in Schroeder's case, a "fifth first."

(Confused? You should take a look within my head.)

However, just in case Dorsey has gotten too damn old as of today, here it is: 3 hours, 16 minutes and 220 miles north of Austin, Texas, one will find the locale of Schroeder's first Trans-Am win: Addison Airport.

"Addison Airport!?"

Let's just call it "The First Circuit Of The Americas."

Note to Bob Stallings, Terry Wilkins and Link; can't omit Link: No, guys, this is not an attempt to deride your "hood." One supposes you, too, could be racing on the track that Dorsey made famous, such as it is, but Addison didn't make the SCCA's race calendar the following year nor, indeed, any race series' subsequent calendar yet seen by yours truly. In short: No worries, Austin!

Thirty-five cars started in the Pontiac (ask Richard Petty) Grand Prix of Dallas, among the drivers of which were Lyn St. James (5th); Scott Sharp (24th); and, even R.J. Valentine (15th)!

For the SCCA Trans-Am's following event in the street's of Detroit, Schroeder would score his first big-time pole!

In the wake of the above point and presuming at least some confusion may have arisen in the minds of some readers (like I said, you should see it in here), Dorsey hadn't scored even a single, lousy pole in the Firestone Firehawk Series.

After a not-too-shabby 4th-place at Detroit and a 38th at Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport (blamed on a "bad rear end"; Dorsey at least started on the outside pole), the 36-year-old boy from Kirkwood, Mo., flat-out galloped in his Roush Ford Mustang!

In the nine, count 'em, nine following races on the 1989 SCCA Trans-Am calendar, Schroeder didn't start OR finish outside of the top-10 (keep calm, Dorsey, keep calm. This deserves a big roll-out).

Indeed, at the end of those nine remaining 1989 Trans-Am races, Dorsey didn't once start or finish a race outside of the top-5.

Yep, in the Trans-Am's nine remaining 1989 races, Dorsey failed just one time to finish outside of the top-3 -- a 4th-place at Heartland Park.

The perfectionist car builder and team owner, Jack Roush, had finally found his driving counterpart!

Note that unlike some series of late wherein championships were won with three, maybe four steady entrants -- two sometimes owned by the same guy -- Dorsey's competition wasn't even close to lightweight.

In the season's final race --traditionally among the least contested regardless of series -- on St. Petersburg, Florida's 2-mile street course, Dorsey faced the likes of the aforementioned St. James, Sharp, Tommy Kendall, Paul Gentilozzi and Irv Hoerr, who finished first to Dorsey's third.

Indeed, the race having the fewest starters, 27, in the 1989 Trans-Am season came in the Stroh's Light Grand Prix at the 3-mile Brainerd (Minn.) International Raceway, where Dorsey was in the second of his nine-race streak and at the end of which he finished second, having faced talented drivers like Sharp, St. James, Hoerr (first place), Kendall, Bob Sobey, The Two Pauls - Newman and Gentilozzi - and Jim Derhaag.

Having no fear or, perhaps in his case, "sense," Dorsey would win the season's two most-contested races at Mid-Ohio and Road America, where 38 and 37 respective starters tried and failed to dislodge Dorsey from the topmost point on the race podium. Even Ron Fellows, third in a Roush Ford Mustang, gave it a shot at Road America.

It was a heckuva run; talk about being "in a zone," Schroeder was "there."

Indeed, especially given the competition, Dorsey Schroeder's 1989 season was among the best ever compiled by any driver, anywhere, anytime.

Human growth hormone?

Deer antler spray?

Failed apocalyptic signal?

Who knows; who cares?

It was cool.

The most incredible part of the Dorsey Schroeder story?

He today celebrates the conclusion of his 60th year and Dorsey wants to go racing one more time!

I'm in!

Happy Birthday, Dorsey!

Later,

DC

POST-ROLEX 24

 

DAYTONA BEACH – I tried but just couldn't conjure a catchier title. I'm out of 'em for the time being.

WHO CARES!? - "Superstar Power In Focus," the live-coverage sTuporCenter Talking Head said from New Orleans on Monday of the just-passed week, "teasing" a short subject of video-taped instances last weekend done, of which deeper examinations were to come and within which were references to Tiger, basketball, hockey and of course, The Bowl of Stupor.

Entirely absent from that following hour's coverage was even a mere mention of The Rolex 24 or its newest five-time overall winner.

At least the español version of the video bible of all things sport, StuporCenter Deportes, displayed a 30-second blip (no, Menendez, not "clip") that seemed inadequate when it portrayed in such little time an event whose total time dwarf's nearly every other sporting activity (remember The Iditarod).

Then again, maybe ESPN still is irritated about the time when it was locked out of the 2003 Daytona International Speedway NASCAR paddock.

Of course, one can voice their displeasure and "vote" with their TV dial (ask your grandpa), but how might ESPN understand why it may have lost any viewership? Osmosis? Should the same happen next year, Twit (or whatever the next-best instantaneous messaging means might be) your displeasure.

AJ WAS RIGHT - In Daytona International Speedway's post-race media center, A.J. Allmendinger, who co-drove the third-place Michael Shank Racing Not-A-BMW Ford-Riley, was asked about his late race mano-a-mano restart tilt with João Barbosa and his No. 9 AXR Not-A-BMW Corvette-Coyote.

(All things considered, with respect to the "Corvette" your humble scribe prefers dispensing with the "chassis by Coyote" or "chassis by Dallara" as stated by numerous talking heads. Let's just call it "Corvette," K? GM likely would prefer it, anyway. And, maybe the same time next year, we'll be able to dispense with Ford-Dallara in favor of "EVOS" or, even better, "Mustang." Surely the Riley gang won't mind losing the chassis face time if they're raking cash, right?)

João Barbosa is one of those guys that most everyone on sight alone fails to perceive a race car driver. Barbosa exhibits a reserved, gentlemanly street-side demeanor that is far more desirable to the CIA than, say, "Bond James Bond," because he doesn't draw attention to self unless conditions warrant – like a fight for position.

Put O Assassino Português in a car and have someone threaten to overtake and, well, it generally doesn't go well for "the threat." (Such not being a matter of doing bad things to good or bad people. It's just that Barbosa is disinclined to change a line if he owns it. Why would anyone?)

Remember if you will, The 'Dinger and O Assassino Português had a late-race, final-restart, door to door dust-off that put The 'Dinger into the dirt while exiting the Pedro Rodriguez International Turn (a.k.a. "The East Horseshoe" and/or "Turn 3" and/or "The First Horseshoe" and/or "The Horseshoe That's Not The West Horseshoe" – really, all of the preceding and still more have been heard by this correspondent).

Soon enough, O Assassino Português was ordered to the penalty box, though not without some dispute beforehand by team manager Elton Sawyer. (And it wasn't Mark Raffauf who levied the penalty! Can anyone imagine that!?).

Frankly, at the time even yours truly thought The 'Dinger's move a dumb one, figuring perhaps at fault was The 'Dinger's lack of familiarity with O Assassino Português, who in 2012's summer Detroit visit properly fired back a eerily calm "the track's green" when sister-car driver David Donohue took verbal umbrage with his sudden one-position fall after Barbosa, within a millisecond's time, drove around a fractionally blocked Double-D.

Back in Daytona and facing press representatives from around the world (in a very busy media center) during the post-race news conference hardly an hour afterward – flanked by John Pew, Ozz Negri and Justin Wilson – The 'Dinger seemed entirely indifferent to having been run off the road by O Assassino Português.

" . . . With an hour to go it's 'go' time . . . (so) I got around him (O Assassino Português) on the outside in (Turn) 1 and at that point I knew I had to go. That was my only chance . . . (because ) we weren't going to beat the (No.) 01 (Chip Ganassi Racing) car . . . so I thought we had a chance to compete for second . . . (so) we were (door handle to door handle) and (Barbosa) just used me up (pursuing the line, pushing The 'Dinger to the grass, er, dirt) . . . (filling) the whole radiator up with dirt so we had to pit (so as to remove the debris)."

"Fortunately(,) he (Barbosa) got a penalty for that so we could get the podium. (It is) just one of (them) racing (deals). No hard feeling there; it was a fun battle," The 'Dinger said.

Wanna bet Barbosa doesn't see it differently?

Note that The 'Dinger didn't say anything, didn't even hint at Barbosa's penalty as being "deserved" or "what he shoulda got." Indeed, one might infer The 'Dinger feels he and the team caught a lucky break after his taking an off-line, top-of-turn, apex-way-the-heck-out-there run on a higher position.

Generally applauded are drivers who manage to pull off such a gutsy but a generally low-percentage-return move ("low percentage" because such rarely is accomplished and, according to Ol' DC's Skip Barber schooling, the turn's track-out point is massively shortened) and that without heroic measures will put a car into the very dirt in which The 'Dinger found himself.

A.J. ALLMENDINGER, WINNER - Still, The 'Dinger actually won, overall, after agreeably taking, calmly answering questions focused on his "The Nightmare On International Speedway Blvd.," at one point noting with a smile, "This track hasn't been very kind to me, you know," he for the first time revisiting for a competition the place where it all began to go "right" last summer, admitting and detailing what he'd since learned of himself in the wake of that early July weekend.

There really isn't much desire on this writer's part to deeply delve into what The 'Dinger said as much as it is a desire to note that he well handled the overall situation when he could've done a "Mayfield" in the first instance.

Hopefully, with The 'Dinger singing "I can see clearly now" that it'll all work out in his favor. True, the banned substance thing was a setback – he's a bit behind where he probably would've been had it not gone down – but based on what Ol' DC has seen The 'Dinger also is way ahead.

Oh! About what was The 'Dinger correct?

No one was " . . . going to beat the (No.) 01 (Chip Ganassi Racing) car."

HINT, HINT - And, speaking of "no one," that's coincidentally the same quantity that should've been surprised at the BMW's strength because a considerable hint was delivered of its ability to, uh, "motor" during Test Days or, as Daytona International Speedway would prefer, "The Roar Before The 24."

Dane Cameron, a young (sorry, Dane, but you are that as compared to Ol' DC), hungry driver with clearly settled ability and who, with Katherine Crawford, Mr. Joe Sahlen and the Family Nonnamaker's support (in the sense of "team") drove the No.42 Sahlen's BMW-Riley – an "older" chassis bought from AXR with updates and a Gen-3 body – cut a second-best "Roar" 1:42.101 lap in early January's third practice session (only the Sahlen Racing car's second) at the end of Day One of the three-day test.

Reiterating Cameron's skill: Somebody shoulda seen it and believed it.

Maybe next time they will.

AWOL AMBROSE - Marcos Ambrose's contract evidently didn't carry a "post-race news conference" codicil inasmuch as he skipped the post-race microphone lineup in which journalists demand answers.

Giving him doubt's benefit, Ambrose might've been ill after failing to remember a Rolex 24 isn't terribly fun unless you're, say, highest on a podium – something he surely learned in 2005 as part of the "Aussie Assault" Rolex 24 team that didn't do anywhere near as well as it may have planned.

Then there's the possibility Ambrose also was aware no penalty at all had been exacted of Juan Pablo Montoya when El Asesino Colombiano left teammates Scott Dixon, Jamie McMurray and Dario Franchitti at the, um, altar of media inquisition after the 2012 Rolex 24 At Daytona's conclusion.

Whatever the case, Ambrose is an interesting guy. A pleasure with which to spar verbally (he's got smarts) and it would've surely been a gas to learn his post-race thoughts. It's probable Ol' DC will catch up with Mr. Ambrose at a later time and during which his post-24 thoughts will be gathered and of which the reader will be informed. (Hopefully; I'm an old guy and all.)

SHANK TAKING THE STAND - No, the MSR team didn't get a first place to back their 2012 Rolex 24 win, but they did finish solidly in third and climbed the post-race podium, even though later rescinded. As is usually the case, no specifics were given, only the oblique, “Somebody done somebody wrong song.”

The team still finished third. Then again, might that be the reason Marcos booked it?

Nah.

Days before the event team owner Mike Shank recorded a fairly profound statement in a pre-race MRN Radio interview, later played during the race, in which Shank said, "After 10 years we know how to do this gig" – or something to that effect.

This listener at that moment realized he, since Shank's first race of the 2004 season, has watched nearly every moment of an in-the-making "Ganassi-style" dynasty in a relatively young Shank. Someday, when Ol' DC is dead and gone, Shank will be hoisting Rolex 24 and Indy 500 winner's trophies high in the air. Later, publicist Matt Clearly (yes, Menendez, it's intentional), still dressing in a white shirt over black pants, will remind Shank that "Ol' DC once predicted" the two-trophy wins.

Shank, his hair still on fire, will turn to Clearly and say, "Who?"

Really? Does anyone have any doubt to the contrary? (About Shank winning, folks.)

WELL, STARWORKS DARN-SURE DIDN'T - What the heck happened to Peter Baron and his two-car squad?

First of all, some end-of-2012-season changes – most notably Enzo Potolicchio booking it (apparently fairly so for the most part and not, repeat, owing any more money to Baron than contractually obligated) – kind of led to some off-season changes that whittled Starworks Motorsport to one car it could or would fully call its own.

Running the risk of appearing to maliciously malign Starworks Motorsports' No. 8 Sunoco Ford-Riley, the top car administered by Starworks Motorsport is the No. 2 Starworks with Alex Popow Ford-Riley entry (Really. Write nasty letters to: Felix Sabates, C/O Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, 8500 Westmoreland Drive, Concord, NC 28027).

The No. 2 Starworks with Alex Popow Non-BMW-Riley entry was in the battle until the final couple of hours after some ingested sand/grass did a very quick, near-disastrous number on the engine, via a clogged cooling system.

Finishing sixth and 13-laps down for a Baron-led team isn't where they'd like to have been if it is to successfully again challenge for the championship, especially when one considers the defending Rolex Series DP champs won the opening race of that team's final Grand-Am championship defense. (Now Chip, don't get all riled and all. It is what it is, you know.)

Principally, they missed the car's setup. Little wonder when the rear-wing rules were changed the week of the Rolex 24, thereby possibly trashing for years to come the value of early January's "Roar Before The 24."

Huh?

RAMBLE ON, WILLIAMS, RAMBLE ON - Crew: $500-per-night lodging, under the best of conditions. Food: easily the equal, but let's give it $250 a day (three squares for ALL the crew). Car rental: Let's be cheap, real cheap and say $50 per rental at, say, two rentals, equals $100 a day. Commercial air, when airplane seats sell out – and they did on so many flights that Delta first added more 757, 737 and, when all of that was full, an extra flight – at $300 per round trip is a decent cost estimate and at, say, seven people per team, including drivers (a lot of 'em drove up from South Florida. Even better for João Barbosa and AXR: He slept in his own bed).

Okay, so what we've got is $850 each day (on the big-time, probably no-way cheap) for 5- to 7-team members at three nights equals $2,550. Throw in the airfare, six sets of tires and, suddenly, we're pressing 20 large, very large . . . and not the first gallon of race gas, at $WayHigh each gallon, and so on goeth prices.

All that spent and then someone else trashes the data by moving, say, an aero surface at a veritable last minute?

People tend not to want to play a game called "Futility." When people have to cut fat checks just to get, ahem, "frustrated" they tend to stop those checks before writing 'em. Really. Think about it a moment or two when coming down from the anger high.

Racing's supposed to be fun! I mean, how many people tell drivers to climb into cars and "Have a bad run!" Or, even better, "'Pop a tire!' because your chassis settings will change when others don't."

Yes, yes, I can hear Tim Keene now, saying something to the effect of, "We had a Riley and we finished the race."

"Mr. Keene, you also had an engine program shared only with Team Sahlen and Highway To Help." (Not argued herein is the partially conceded point that others could've gone "BMW," too, but didn't. Steve Dinan wouldn't have been able to build sufficient numbers of engine had, say, even three other teams switched in the last two or three months.)

One supposes DIS will have all the entries it can handle next year. On the other hand, it might have fewer than it would like, especially with the grumbling from the guys on the other side, saying something like, "And then they changed the rules just before the race and screwed up tire wear for at least a few Rileys that had just managed to dial it in earlier in the month."

If one loses 10-percent on, say, $100, it's 10 bucks. Lose 10-percent on $1 million and we're getting into a couple-or-three annual DIS salaries, folks.

LET'S TWEAK THE RULES ONE LAST TIME - It's the final season before the New World Order comes to the forefront, roughly one-year-minus-one-month hence.

You folks over in "Consolidation" really need to concentrate on the 2014 rulebook, right? Bringing together two series formerly having disparate philosophical views is fraught with twists and turns that need proper straightening, right?

So, please, just give everyone what they'd like to see at least one (and last) time: No more dinking with 2013 performance equivalencies, moving wings here nor increasing or decreasing restrictor plates there.

Just cut "Competitor Bulletin 2013-7" and within which strike all applicable DP mechanical language and insert: "Run What Ya Brung, Son."

Might as well do it with GT, too.

Then witness the crowd counts.

It'll be only for the 2013 season's remainder (on the record) and during which the powers-that-be can focus on 2014 with all the "necessary" restrictions properly threshed beforehand.

It'll be fun "For The Fans"; the ensuing races will burn immense sums of money (and convince owners to gladly accept a return to "restrictions").

Should sponsors turn out in droves to support the new "Run What Ya Brung" format and (nearly) everyone makes gobs of money, then burnt will be the proposed 2014 rules, everyone learning the "Run/Brung" was a strategy the whole doggone time.

With Run/Brung in the rules forefront, unneeded then is a "technical" staff – who has as much of a vested interest in a perpetual fine-tuning of rules as do legislatures filled with lawyers likewise parsing new statutes (rules), which then provide generations of Morgans, Morgans and Morgans, Attorneys In Perpetuity, plenty of advertising time.

Later,

DC

HONEYMOON IS DONE

DAYTONA BEACH – On the way to Daytona International Speedway and walking through his front door Saturday morning, Ol’ DC took an early daylight peek at the sun poking into the horizon's distant sky. Having for his life's length been in and very near to water's largest bodies, Ol' DC couldn't help but mutter, "Red skies morning; sailors take warning."

An early learned, ingrained longstanding saying that has proved as wildly incorrect as some overpaid TV weather announcers, consequently learned and ingrained is the wisdom of reviewing weather prognostications from one or more credible sources.

No need for such secondary check today, though, because even had God or Mom Nature or Barack Obama ordered-up perfectly blue skies they still wouldn't have chased away the dark cloud that formed over DIS and the across-the-street International Motorsports Center in the wake of the high-noon news conference by ALMS' chief operating officer, Scott Elkins, and Grand-Am managing director of competition, Richard Buck.

Indeed, so intense is the cloud that not only did it continue to "hang" overnight but it still was quite evident Saturday morning.

Furthermore, given the mood of more than a few haphazardly encountered racing-type souls in Saturday morning's sportscar garage, er, paddock, one couldn't help but walk away with the impression that the evermore darkening cloud wasn't about to dissipate anytime soon.

For sure, surprising was the sheer volume (as in "high number count," Menendez) of unsolicited comments encountered upon a first stroll through the garage.

Ol' DC has at times over the years wondered about those who seem perfectly at ease in carrying personal-sized dark clouds.

A draconian subset of the Dark Cloud Society at times leaves one wondering how another could possibly live a life filled with such levels of negativity and that drowned in it are any who come within range of their personal vortexes.

Indeed, in the want of avoiding the aforementioned, some motorsports journalists have expressed a preference of running across hot tracks in the hope of escaping a pursuing Dark Cloud devotee.

Given the number of the usually inclined "rose-colored-glass" folks this writer encountered Saturday, one can only imagine what any of the Dark Cloud types might've said about Friday's "Grand-Am, American Le Mans Series Announce Class Structure for Unified Series" in which bared was "Organizations Taking Inclusionary, 'Best Of Both Worlds' Multi-Class Approach."

"Funny, we (the Grand-Am side) correctly went from multiple classes of cars, and thoroughly confused consumers, to two classes," said one among Saturday's sea of the unusually disinclined.

"In a year's time we'll have doubled the classes, while losing one Grand-Am class in the process.

"I 'get it' that there are some things they feel they have to do. What I don't 'get' is why they evidently think I'm so stupid that I can't possibly get what they think they have to do because no matter how many times I've asked 'em, the only thing they say when I ask any of 'em is, 'Well, it's what we've got to do!'"

"Grand-Am had a 'work in progress' going before this," he continued, "it was the one where we went from four or five classes of race cars down to two. And it was a good move, too. Or so I thought. Evidently I was wrong, because next year we're going back to, what is it, four or five classes? Even that reporter (The Daytona Beach News-Journal's Godwin Kelly) had to ask them (Elkins and Buck) how many classes would be at Daytona because he was confused about how many classes there would be next year. When people are confused about what you're talking about, what do you think they'll be thinking when it's actually done?"

Other comments:

"Tell me the one reason for the Daytona Prototype. It was the roof. The whole DP thing, from first-thought to on-the-track, was something like 8, 9 months after Jeff Clinton was killed in Miami" (DC Note: driving an open-top SRP2). "What'll we do next? Drop the HANS because no one's died from a neck injury?"

"I'm, like, thoroughly and totally confused. I've felt like a salmon swimming upstream since September's buyout because I've been telling people 'It isn't a merger because Grand-Am bought out those guys.' Man, I was way off the mark. I'll tell you that. Way off the mark. I was totally wrong as to who did what. But I'll tell ya, I coulda swore it was the other way around."

"I'm confused."

"Jim France cuts a check to buy the (ALMS) series lock, stock and barrel, and now we're changing rules to accommodate the guys who were bought out? I thought 'we' won!? When the IRL bought ChampCar, did they take cars from each series and consolidate them into one class. Hell no, they didn't! And now we're gonna do it? What's the deal with that?"

"Elkins and Buck said they were going to try to maximize the money people have in their racing equipment. How about the money I have in my class? And next year they're going to stick me in with the GTC cars. So much for the value of my property."

As Jedd Clampett often said, "Wee doggie!"

Four months ago when the Grand-Am/ALMS-IMSA deal was announced there were an insufficient number of backs to slap.

Ol' DC thinks the honeymoon looks cooked at this point. Yet, one shouldn't have thought it wouldn't end. They always do.

Later,

DC

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.