Moonlighting
By Andrew Cutler
January 24 2009
For many American motorsports fans the 2009 racing season kicks off this weekend at Daytona International Speedway as the cars of the Rolex Grand Am Series take to the road course - which incudes a fair bit of the high-banked oval - for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. Serveral IndyCar & NASCAR drivers will be among those "moonlighting" in the extra cars that teams bring to this high-profile event.
Like the American Le Mans Series, the Rolex Series features two distinct classes of cars: purpose-made Daytona Prototype cars, capable of up to 200mph, and Grand Touring, which are highly modified street production cars.
For the past three years the winner from the DP class has come from the Ganassi Racing stable: former F1 & current NASCAR pilot Juan Pablo Montoya shared in the driving duties for last year's winner. JPM will be back in Ganassi's full time Rolex DP car agian this weekend. The team will also field a second car, driven by their IndyCar drivers, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti & Alex Lloyd.
The rest of the field will be out to break Ganassi's recent monopoly at this event. Team Penske will field a DP car, with Ryan Briscoe getting his share of the seat time. NASCAR stalwart Richard Childress Racing will also field a car, with AGR's Danica Patrick as one of four assigned drivers. The whole field will have to contend with the pole-sitting Brumos Porsche, who's driver roster includes Buddy Rice, the now former D&R pilot.
Other IndyCar names in the field include Ryan Hunter-Reay & Darren Manning, both of whom have no deals for the 2009 season as of yet. Besides Montoya, notable names from the NASCAR Sprint Cup ranks include series champion Jimmie Johnson, Casey Mears (one of Danica's co-drivers), Kyle Petty & AJ Allemdinger.
The race starts on Saturday at 3:30pm ET.
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I do have one question, though. What's with Dario's hair? I was half expecting him to appraise the value of a 1930s wicker chair when I first saw that.
[www.grand-am.com]
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Just one small correction. The GT cars in the Grand Am Series, with the exception of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars, aren't really modified road cars. They are tube framed chassis with road car bodies, more akin to what NASCAR was in the 90s than what most GT classes are worldwide.
Thanks for the correction. I take what I can get on stories like this from newspaper articles, hoping for factual accuracy on the journalist's part: Not always the best thing to do, I fear.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009:01:29:05:15:54 by IndyAndy.