DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Winning one 24-hour sports car race takes a combination of a fast reliable car, skilled drivers and a good helping of luck to avoid all the possible pitfalls.
Chip Ganassi Racing is bucking the odds, going for four in a row in this weekend’s Grand-Am Rolex 24. But it wouldn’t be wise to bet against the elite two-car team.
“Eighty percent is preparation to get you to Victory lane,” said Scott Pruett, who has been part of the past two Daytona wins in a Ganassi Lexus Riley.
“A lot of it happens before you even get to the racetrack,” the reigning Rolex Series champion said. “We as a team started working three weeks after the end of last season. Literally, our focus has been the Rolex 24 since the first week of November.
“We know all the parts and pieces and everything we would have thought might be a potential weak link from the year before, we’ll go through and redo. Anything on those cars that we feel that potentially could cause us grief during the 24, we fix.”
That’s why Pruett, along with usual Grand-Am driving partner Memo Rojas and NASCAR star Juan Pablo Montoya are favored to battle the other Ganassi team entry co-driven by reigning IndyCar champion Scott Dixon, former IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti and former Indy Lights champion Alex Lloyd for the win.
It was Pruett, Montoya, Franchitti and Rojas who combined to win here last year, while Pruett, Montoya and Salvador Duran won it for Ganassi in 2007 and Dixon, Dan Wheldon and Casey Mears started the streak in 2006.
The grueling twice-around-the-clock race will start Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on the 3.56-mile road course that snakes through the infield at Daytona International Speedway as well as using about three-fourths of the high-banked NASCAR oval.
David Donohue, son of the late driving great Mark Donohue, won the pole in record fashion on Thursday in a Porsche Riley that will be co-driven by Buddy Rice, Darren Law and Antonio Garcia.
Pruett qualified the No. 01 Lexus sixth and Dixon was eighth in the No. 02 Ganassi entry. But the top 10 qualifiers were separated by just one second — a distance of about 40 feet over one lap.
Dixon would love to get back to Victory Lane after watching his teammates win the past two years while his team ran into a variety of problems.
“I think in the last two years our car was quick enough to win, but we just didn’t keep it together,” last year’s Indy 500 winner said. “We didn’t keep it on the black stuff, which is what you need to do.
“Going for a fourth (in a row) is good, but when you’re in the other car that’s not winning, it’s pretty sad.”
Unlike the early years in the 24-hour endurance classic, mechanical problems are not usually the biggest problem in the race.
“Technology has evolved,” Montoya said. “You hardly have any engine failures. It’s more about people making mistakes than anything else.”
What makes this race particularly difficult on a track where the 19 Daytona Prototypes in the field will hit speeds of up to 200 mph, is the presence of 30 slower — some considerably slower — GT entries.
“Truthfully, the thing that can take you out of this race is probably a stupid mistake by another driver,” Pruett said, pointing out that Alex Gurney’s pole-winning Pontiac Riley was slammed out of the race two years ago on the fourth lap when he tangled with a GT car while trying to make a pass.
For the most part, though, it takes a team effort to win here.
“The race we won in 2006 was won more in the pits,” Dixon said. “We had mechanical problems, all kinds of problems throughout the race. We even had to go back to the garage, but only for a very small time. They just practice so much at doing brake changes, gearbox changes and all that stuff that they just had it all nailed down.
“In an IndyCar race, that could never happen. As soon as you come in and try to change the brakes or something you’re out of it.”
Besides Montoya, other NASCAR drivers in this year’s 24-hour event include three-time reigning Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Petty, Mears, A.J. Allmendinger and Colin Braun.
Johnson, whose Stallings-Gainsco Pontiac Riley team finished second a year ago, will co-drive with Gurney, son of racing legend Dan Gurney, former IndyCar champion Jimmy Vasser and Jon Fogarty.
Johnson, who will be going for a record four in a row in Cup this season, would love to be part of the team that spoils the Ganassi team’s plans of a record-setting fourth straight win.
“We have high expectations; we’re here to win the race,” Johnson said. “We have a very good driving car and I think we have the right mind-set for a 24-hour race.
“We came awfully close last year, so we ought to be in good shape.”
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