Bill Oursler on testing the Pulse of the test days at Daytona If the early season pre-race Rolex Grand American Sports Car Series test session showed anything, it was that picking an overall winner next month will be harder than winning at the crap tables in Las Vegas. In all, less than two seconds covered the first Daytona Prototypes on the speed charts, with the Wayne Taylor- led Sun Trust Pontiac Riley team barely leading the similar Kevin Buckler owned car with Max Papis aboard, Papis and his former Chip Ganassi partner Scott Pruett having narrowly beaten Taylor and Max Angelelli for the 2004 Grand Am crown last fall in the California Speedway series finale. Stars not cars… Speaking of Pruett, he and his crew, including former IRL champ Scott Dixon led the two-car Lexus-Riley Ganassi squad to the fourth and fifth quickest record times during the three-day session, starting on the first Friday of the New Year. Sandwiched in between was one the “house” Pontiac Crawfords, this one with former Le Mans, Sebring and Daytona winner Andy Wallace and NASCAR’s Tony Stewart at the wheel. In fact, the test session was not only awash in Daytona Prototypes, of which 31 were on the grounds, but awash in name drivers. In all, there were no less than nine Nextel Cup regulars including ex-titlists, Stewart and the Labonte brothers, Terry and Bobby on hand, but such open wheel luminaries, as Dixon and Paul Tracy, king of the Champ Car set in 2003. Even Emerson Fittipaldi came out of retirement to try out the Jim Bell Motorsport Rolex winning Doran Pontiac from last year, although there were no firm indications that Emmo might run it in the race itself. Hoop Dreams Clearly, the Grand Am folks have decided to make, what we call in basketball “a full court press,” at the Rolex Grand Am 24-Hour season opener. The question is whether or not the effort will provide the Grand Am and its very different, and highly restricted prototypes with the kind of legitimacy to be recognized as a major force in the road racing universe/ There is no question that the Grand Am’s unique approach to prototype competition has produced some of the closest, best and most entertaining sports car racing in recent memory. There is also little question, at least up to now, that few, other than the competitors themselves, have been beating the doors down to watch. From a monetary viewpoint that is not as important to the Grand Am as one might think since the business structure for the series is largely based on “back gate” revenues. To put it another way, the Grand Am’s solvency is mainly founded on the fees paid by the participants, this coupled with lower than usual operating costs (much of the series is run at International Speedway owned tracks like Daytona, Homestead, California and Watkins Glen) has made the championship profitable for its investors, which number among them members of the France family. On the other had, from a pride prospective, the lack of public acceptance has hurt. Spectators – other than perhaps at Daytona – have been relatively few, and television ratings on Speed, equally low. A well traveled resume For all of its problems, the American Le Mans Series, with its low car counts, has been the winner in terms of the attention paid to it. What one saw at the revised (it has a completely new garage and infield area) Daytona facility in January was the beginnings of a push to reverse that situation, a push, which, if successful, could put the ALMS out of business. The irony here is that contained within the Grand Am’s staff resources are people such as Competition Director Mark Raffauf, and former Ford engineer, and racer Don Hayward, the man credited with helping to shape and nurture the Daytona Prototype sandbox, who could make that happen. Raffauf spent much of his career working at IMSA, now the ALMS’ captive sanctioning organization, first for founder John Bishop, and then guiding its racing fortune’s himself with his partner George Silberman during the highly successful Camel GT era. As Raffauf puts its “I’ve made all the mistakes, and I’ve learned from them.” In fact, Raffauf used the old tubeframe All American GT model, developed by Bishop in the mid 1970’s to stem the conquering Porsche RSR tide, as model for the Grand Am’s re-created production car universe. “What we’ve done is exactly the same thing, letting the large volume cars, to use a tubeframe structure to equalize their competitiveness with lower volume, more competition ready vehicles such as the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup entries, as well as the Ferrari 360’s and Maseratis and BMW M3s.” Here's the stitch… Although the Daytona 24-Hour should be dominated by the Porsche crowd, once the new Pontiacs arrive, along with their mass produced cousins, things could change drastically. Still, there remains the question of legitimacy; answer to which is, as of now, undisclosed. Raffauf, who should know, suggests that by leasing the rules from Le Mans, the ALMS has hemmed itself in. “Listen,” says Raffauf, “I’m not in the business of telling someone else how to do their’s. However, from bitter experience I can tell you that the rules for Le Mans are great for their event, but not necessarily good for anything outside of Le Mans. When we did the Camel GT, we said we would use cars ‘like those’ race at Le Mans, which kept us in the loop, but not tied too it. I don’t think that has changed much since.” De old folks at home… Regardless, Raffauf and the rest of the Grand Am, are focused completely on taking their championship to the next level of maturity. It will be interesting to see if they succeed. |
Bill Oursler |
