Speedweeks/Tailgating/Racing's Fame Monster
Random comments about the brief time I spent at the Rolex 24 Grand-AM 24 Hours of Daytona:
- Crowd was its usual enthusiastic self--but not as big as it's been.
- Michael Shank Racing and AJ Allmendinger cannot buy a break at the (TM) World Center of Racing, it seems. Every racing gremlin (not the American Motors car) seems to camp out at the 6 or 60 car garage, and waits until things are going better than well to strike.
- How about a Porsche team taking the win with a V8 and not the legendary and proven boxer 6? And how about the fact that it's sharing garage space and engineering smarts in Jacksonville with the Brumos Porsche team?
- With the hoopla about NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers in the race--the only ones with significant hardware were Max Papis and part-timer Scott Pruett in the Riley BMW, finishing second to the Action Express Porsche Team in the Daytona Prototype Class and second overall for the Chipster. Ganassi's other BMW Riley ran like Jack the Bear until it expired with about 9 hours to go (Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya in that seat).
- Doubtless you saw the NFL stories on increased security. Wonder what that would be like if NASCAR and the track operators tried that at a place like Pocono, Talladega or any one of the other venues where the folks like to pop off firecrackers, have a couple barley-pops and grill a steak.
- Auto Racing's "Fame Monster", Danica Patrick, will make her initial stock car foray at the 200 mile ARCA race on Saturday, nestled between the 36 Hours of Daytona (Sprint Cup restrictor plate qualifying seems to take that long) and the all-skate Budweiser Shootout that evening. She will have to at least qualify in the top 10 (should be no problem to do that given JR Motorsports' ingenuity) and would have to have a top-10 finish to be taken seriously given all the hype. Even though her handlers are doing their best to lower expectations, her fans and sponsors expect a bit more. It would make a good story if she were to win the ARCA race, then change her mind and add the Daytona Nationwide race to her 2010 schedule.
- Lost in all this is Hurley Haywood's last hurrah as a sports car driver at Daytona. Haywood will give up driving the #59 Porsche Daytona prototype...but not an affiliation with the legendary Brumos Porsche team.
You will hear the reason why the Action Express team won in the winner's comments this week on Race-Talk, along with some chat with the aforementioned Ms Patrick. You may always hear this week's program, as well as the past two editions on our Motor Sports Radio archive page:
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