The Chip Ganassi Racing Lexus Riley of Scott Pruett, Juan Pablo Montoya and Salvador Duran won overall honors at the 24 Hours of Daytona Grand-Am Rolex series classic on the Speedway's 3.56 mile road course. That car completed 668 laps in 24:00:55.002. Montoya is a NASCAR Nextel Cup series rookie, reunited with racing maven and team owner Ganassi for 2007. Not a bad result for JPM. Pruett has 7 class wins at Daytona (most of any driver) and now has 13 Rolex series wins. JPM joins a list of nine other drivers to win a sports car race at Daytona, and the Indianapolis 500 (for the record, they include Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt, Parnelli Jones, Arie Luyendyk, Bobby Rahal, Mark Donohue, Al Unser Sr. & Al Unser Jr., and Dan Wheldon.
Gordon impressed a lot of observers with the 3rd place drive. The Wayne Taylor machine got behind and the team (Gordon, Taylor, Max Angelelli, and Jan Magnussen) clawed its way back to the lead lap, before a late race brake pad change knocked them off the lead lap.
Helio Castroneves and Sam Hornish had a long race...finishing 9th...some 40 laps down to the winner. Props to Hornish for getting road racing experience the hard way...it will pay off.
The Indy Racing League will test here Wednesday and Thursday. We'll blog some stuff your way.
Paul Kaminski
1/28/2007
