Courtesy Grand-Am Communications
TOOELE, Utah (September 15, 2007) – From championship to heartbreak, Saturday’s Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Special Reserve season finale at Miller Motorsports Park was a true representation of the season as a whole – including one team’s championship hopes literally going up in smoke.
The Sunchaser 1000 was a race for the ages, not in the least because of Riley-Matthews Motorsports first career Rolex Series win. Jim Matthews, Marc Goossens and Ryan Hunter-Reay persevered in the No. 91 Riley-Matthews Motorsports Pontiac Riley throughout the 1000k marathon, climbing 18 spots from their starting position to the top of the podium.
“Our car was very strong toward the end of the race,” said Goossens, who ran the team’s final stint. “We kept trying and trying all afternoon long. We were running some of our fastest times toward the end of the day. The car wasn’t fantastic, but we kept going thanks to my team.”
Equally as impressive though was the battle for the Daytona Prototype championship, which entered the day as the closest in all of motorsports.
As many expected, the championship outcome wasn’t decided until the final laps of a drama filled race. Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty entered the season finale in the No. 99 GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing Pontiac Riley one point ahead of Scott Pruett in the No. 01 TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Lexus Riley and three points ahead of Max Angelelli in the No. 10 SunTrust Racing Pontiac Riley.
The championship drama began to unfold on Lap 110 when Pruett took over for co-pilot Salvador Duran, exiting pit lane in second place – just behind Angelelli in the SunTrust machine and five seconds ahead Jon Fogarty in the GAINSCO car. Five laps later, Pruett was locked in a nose-to-tail battle with Angelelli while Fogarty had closed the gap to just three seconds behind the leaders.
While holding Pruett at bay, smoke clouds began to puff from the back of Angelelli’s Pontiac Riley. What was feared to be an engine ready to fail turned out to be the rear tire rubbing on the fender. A Lap 113 pit stop fixed the problem but sent the SunTrust machine back to seventh place.
Meanwhile, Fogarty had closed the gap to Pruett and was searching for a pass to take both the race and championship lead. Fogarty chose his opportunity on Lap 115 and as the pair battled through the track’s first few turns Fogarty moved to the inside entering Turn 5. Contact send Pruett wide and Fogarty found himself in the race lead.
Pruett recovered, but the incident left the No. 01 Lexus Riley with a flat left rear tire and the No. 99 Pontiac Riley with a flat left front. With 20 of the 4.486-mile track’s turns remaining between the two cars and the pit lane, Pruett’s tire began to shred – taking body work from that corner of the car with it. The GAINSCO team took their opportunity in the pits to make their final driver change, putting Gurney back in the car for the race’s final stint.
The metal flying from the TELMEX machine had to land somewhere, and as fate would have it, cut the right rear tire on the third championship contending car. As Angelelli limped back to the pits with body work now being torn from his machine, something ruptured and set the rear of the car into a ball of fire. Angelelli was able to pull into pit lane and the fire was contained, but the Italian’s championship hopes were gone. Angelelli’s fire and the debris on the track brought out a full course caution.
“We knew we did not have the quickest car for one lap, but we knew that we could race both (the 01 and the 99) over the longer distances,” said Angelelli, who started eighth and co-drove with Jan Magnussen. “We had the strategy in our favor. Our car was good on older tires. We fought all day long on the track. And losing a race and a championship this way is not just. It’s just awful. It’s a bad feeling. It’s going to take a long time for me to forget today and this result.”
The race’s fourth full-course caution after contact between the No. 23 Alex Job Racing Ruby Tuesday Championship Racing Porsche Crawford and the No. 61 AIM Autosport Exchange Traded Gold/Barrick Gold Lexus Riley on Lap 124 sent the Ruby Tuesday machine spinning and set up the final showdown for the championship, now down to just two contenders. Gurney restarted in fifth on Lap 127 with Pruett two spots behind, and five laps later Oswaldo Negri in the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Lexus Riley slipped past Gurney – leaving the battle for the championship nose-to-tail.
With only six laps remaining in the season, the sun was setting on both the race and Pruett’s championship aspirations. While attempting to get by Gurney on Lap 132, Pruett made contact with the rear of the GAINSCO machine, with Gurney falling to 11th and Pruett climbing to eighth.
Race officials ruled the contact avoidable and assessed Pruett a drive through penalty for the incident. Pruett served the penalty at the end of Lap 136, returning to the track in 10th place – two slots behind Gurney. Pruett improved to ninth position when the checkered flag flew after Lap 139, one spot behind the GAINSCO car.
”We were racing coming around the back and Negri got around him and I was going inside of him, and he ducked down on me a little bit,” Pruett said. “We touched just briefly and got up on the line. No spin or nothing, he just got off the line. This team has a lot to be proud of. We worked hard all year and raced clean all year.”
With the finish, Gurney and Fogarty become the fifth different Daytona Prototype champions since the class was introduced in 2003, joining Terry Borcheller (2003), Pruett and Max Papis (2004), Angelelli and Wayne Taylor (2005) and J�rg Bergmeister (2006).
“I’m still coming down from it all and trying to take it all in,” said Gurney, who captured his first career professional racing championship. “It feels amazing to be the champion. We deserved this championship. We broke a lot of records this year, and it’s great to come out on top. It was a great day today. With Bob Stallings and Pontiac, this championship feels great.”
Unlike his teammate, Fogarty had prior championships to compare this to.
“Any championship worth winning is difficult to accomplish,” Fogarty said. “This one was the most difficult to win in my professional career, that’s for sure. The whole GAINSCO team, we’re pretty straight forward guys and a straight forward organization, and we just focused on the task at hand. And that’s what we did all year. We always made sure we had a quick car. It’s racing, and yes its endurance racing, but at the end you have to be fast. We certainly had the package. We all worked together, and Bob (Stallings) was a great leader. He gave us the tools we need, and we used those. That’s what it takes.”
Back on the podium, the Riley-Matthews team was celebrating its own milestone achievement. Goossens crossed the line 1.280 seconds ahead of the No. 11 SAMAX Pontiac Riley, driven by Enge.
“I don’t know any other way to put it; this is a good way to end the season,” said team co-owner Matthews. “This win is a long time coming. Marc and Ryan drove a great race and as a team we were able to get our first win in the last race. We never put a wheel wrong and we didn’t have any bad luck. The car never missed a beat; the Riley guys really had us hooked up. This is a nice way to go into the 2008 season.”
Hunter-Reay joined the team for the fourth time this season, driving in the seasons two other endurance races (the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen) and at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The team’s best finish with Hunter-Reay was previously sixth at Watkins Glen.
“We’ve been knocking on the door for a long time this season,” said Hunter-Reay, the IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year. “It’s been a long time coming, so this is great. This is just racing; you never know when your time is going to come. We were there in the right time and the right place. The race today was so much fun. It was a blast, thanks to these guys."
No comments:
Post a Comment