DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Chip Ganassi’s drivers weren’t racing to make money. They wanted to make history.
They succeeded Sunday when Juan Pablo Montoya teamed with Dario Franchitti, Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas to give Ganassi an unprecedented third victory in the Rolex 24-Hour race in as many years.
“None of these guys is getting one extra dime for this,” Ganassi said before the start of the race. “They all just want to be here and be part of it.”
Montoya agreed.
“It’s all about the win and the watches,” the former open-wheel star and last year’s top NASCAR rookie said in referring to the Rolex Daytona watches that go to each of the winners.
Ganassi had more on his mind after the hard-fought victory.
“My favorite win is always the most recent one,” said Ganassi, whose NASCAR team will be back at Daytona International Speedway in two weeks hoping to win its first Daytona 500 with Montoya, stock car rookie Franchitti and Reed Sorenson. “Obviously, this is a huge accomplishment, but I’m not retiring any time soon. I’m still trying to climb the mountain. There’s still a lot of peaks to conquer.”
Other than a minor handling problem for Pruett at the start of the race Saturday afternoon, the team’s No. 01 Lexus Riley Daytona Prototype was virtually perfect, racing at or near the lead in the race, which up until its waning hours was the most competitive in the event’s 46-year history.
At dawn on Sunday, with about six hours to go, there were five other prototypes on the lead lap. But, as often happens in endurance events, attrition suddenly took its toll.
The Ganassi car had been swapping leads with the Ford Riley shared by NASCAR’s A.J. Allmendinger, Ian James, Burt Frisselle and John Pew. That car, driven by Frisselle, was just seconds behind the leader when a tire blew, damaging the suspension midway through the 21st hour and knocking it out of contention.
“Last year I felt we had a stronger car,” said Montoya, who combined with Pruett and Salvador Duran to win here in 2007, leading 468 of 668 laps on the 3.56-mile road circuit. “That was a car that you thought, whatever happens, we were fast enough to win. This year, if it came down to it, I think it would have been a lot harder.
“I pushed really hard every stint that I was in the car to make sure that whichever car that was fast and tried to stay with us had to work as hard as well. In a way it worked, because other cars had problems.”
Montoya, who had taken the wheel near the end of the 18th hour, suddenly found himself with a comfortable five-lap lead.
“At that point, with that kind of lead, you just have to make sure you don’t touch anything or run over curbs too hard,” he said. “You just roll.”
The winning car was one of 10 prototypes that chose to pit during the pace lap to change from rain tires to slicks as the track dried. That meant Pruett, who started in the car, fell all the way to 18th. But it didn’t take long for the eventual winner to get back into contention, running among the top five from the fifth hour on.
Pruett took over from Montoya for the last two hours on the way to becoming the winningest sports car driver at Daytona with his eighth victory — three overall wins and five others in lower classes.
“It’s such a challenge to do this,” said Pruett, who also has class victories in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. “This is the hardest endurance race in the world and this one was really tough.
“There were a lot of fast cars and the conditions were pretty treacherous. It was dry, it was wet. You just never knew which tires to stay with, wets or slicks. But this is great. We’re just going to keep doing it as long as we can.”
Franchitti, who won the IndyCar Series title last year, and Rojas both won here for the first time. Franchitti also won the Indianapolis 500 and a class victory in the 12-hour race at Sebring in 2007.
“It’s just been one hell of a year,” the Scotsman said. “But the preparation the team puts into these cars made this one possible.”
Ganassi, who also won a record four straight championships in the CART open-wheel series in the late ’90s, got his first win here in 2006 with IndyCar stars Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon combining with NASCAR’s Casey Mears for a win in his No. 02 entry.
No other team has won three years in a row, but the late Peter Gregg owned and drove the cars that won three straight races from 1973 to 1976. The 1974 race was canceled because of a national gas crisis.
The latest edition of the 24-hour grind was very competitive most of the way.
Fifteen different cars led, breaking the record of 11, set last year. Overall, there were 60 lead changes, 16 more than the record of 44 set in 2005.
In the end, the winning car led a race-high 252 of 695 laps, completing 2,460 miles, for a two-lap victory over the runner-up Pontiac Riley driven by two-time defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, former CART champion Jimmy Vasser and 2007 Rolex Grand-Am Series prototype champions Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney. Johnson, who has raced in this event four times, also finished second in 2005.
Four more laps back in third was the Pontiac Riley driven by NASCAR champion Kurt Busch, two-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe.
For Ganassi, the only disappointment was the performance of the No. 02, shared by Dixon, Wheldon, Duran and Alex Lloyd.
“It seemed like that car caused half the caution flags out there,” Ganassi said.
Duran had the fastest lap early in the race, but damaged the car when he went into the grass to avoid two of the slower GT class cars. He spun again later in the race and Lloyd was at the wheel when the badly damaged car spun a third time and retired late in the 18th hour.
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