The Worlds first daily e-newspaper devoted to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series
Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for 8 January, 2005
Vol. III,No.VIXII OFFSEASON EDITION
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The Worlds first daily e-newspaper devoted to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for 8 January, 2005 Vol. III,No.VIXII OFFSEASON EDITION |
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Cup Drivers Invade Annual Grand American Daytona Test Days
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Quote Of The Day: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". --Gandhi Happy Birthday: Bobby Hamilton Jr 7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: Martin announces “The Road Home” commemorative brick program Hermie to go with Fords Gaughan has designs on Truck Series Johnson, Kahne to test new Goodyear tires at Atlanta Allison gets show in Tennessee Speed Reading Coming attraction Hines hustles to Love’s Thursday Chili Bowl qualifier victory Atlanta looks at sprint cars A driving crusade Rusty Wallace Inc. Racing names new manager Chase aids chance of title defense The agony and the ecstasy of 2004
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January 8 No less than nine full-time NASCAR Nextel Cup stars are slated to drive Daytona Prototypes in the season-opening Rolex 24, February 3 -- 6, and six of them were in action Friday as three-day testing got underway on the 3.56-mile Daytona road course.
Busch, Kenseth, Biffle, Mears, McMurray and the Labonte brothers all got behind the wheel Friday, some strapping into a Daytona Prototype for the very first time. Stewart will miss testing this weekend while he competes in the Chili Bowl midget race and Johnson is scheduled to arrive on Sunday. NASCAR Cup Champions Bobby and Terry Labonte will share driving duties with IRL IndyCar Series driver Bryan Herta and sports car ace Jan Magnussen in the No. 44 Doran Racing Pontiac Doran. The two were among the drivers taking their first laps in the Daytona Prototype. "It's a race you always watch and you always want to be a part of," said Bobby Labonte, who drives the No. 18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. "We've always watched it on TV and we always know who wins from the Al Holbert days on back. It's kind of cool. Terry's driven this race before years ago. It's my first time and I'm really looking forward to it."
"This is exciting," Terry Labonte said. "Bobby and I have been talking about this for a while. Bobby really did all the work putting this together. We've got a good team. I think it's a great series. I've been following the series for a while and it's really come a long way." Terry Labonte said the biggest challenge in the grueling twice-around-clock challenge will be handling all the shifting duties on the Daytona Prototype, which is the premier division of the Rolex Sports Car Series. "The biggest difference is shifting the transmission," Terry Labonte said. "This transmission is completely different than what I'm use to running. I think that's going to be the biggest thing to get adjusted too is upshifting and downshifting. They don't use a clutch where we use a clutch some in ours." "It's quite a mix of people that come here for the 24 hours," Bobby Labonte said. "Obviously this race has been going on for a long time. It's definitely a neat program getting a lot of different people here to do this." Casey Mears was another driver who made his Daytona Prototype debut in the No. 03 Target Lexus Riley. "The Daytona Prototypes are similar to the Indy Cars that I used to drive, yet they stick a little better than the stock cars," said Mears who joins McMurray in a three-car, nine-driver powerhouse line-up from reigning Daytona Prototype champions Chip Ganassi Racing. "This is a totally different discipline. Talking to everyone, you run 85 or 90 percent pretty much the entire 24-hour race. The real objective for the first three-fourths of the race is to stay out of trouble and stay in contact with the leaders and try to be in a good, safe place and not be too hard on the car." Mears will join fellow Ganassi teammates Darren Manning and 2003 IRL Champion Scott Dixon who carry similar Target sponsorship in the IndyCar Series. "It's really fun that Target got the two Chip Ganassi cars together," Mears said. "We've got a Target super team here this weekend, so I'm looking forward to the run. This series just a couple years ago was having a hard time just staying alive, and they did a good job recreating it and bringing a lot of things back in to the sport. They made it attractive for guys from other areas of motorsports to come to the series. It's really cool and there's a lot of depth. It's interesting, and I get to race against some old friends." The Labontes and Mears are part of the All-Star cast competing in the Rolex 24. In addition to the NASCAR standouts, other notable star drivers from other forms of motorsports competing in the Rolex 24 include Paul Tracy, Dario Franchitti, Buddy Rice, Scott Sharp, Stefan Johansson, Scott Dixon, Boris Said and Wally Dallenbach. Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series regulars returning for the international event that kicks off the motorsports season include five-time Rolex 24 winner Hurley Haywood, Scott Pruett, Terry Borcheller, Wayne Taylor, Andy Wallace, Darren Law and Max Papis. Rolex 24 At Daytona testing continues Today and Sunday. Testing sessions are free and open to the public with access to the Oldfield Grandstand available through the lobby of DAYTONA USA.
Owner wants more
The race team that darn near won the 2004 Rolex 24 with a couple of stock car drivers has returned with a new car and an international roster. In last year's marathon sportscar race Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were leading in one of Rick Howard-Dave Brule's entries when mechanical problems forced them out of the event.
Testing continues today and Sunday. The Oldfield Grandstand is open at no charge. Last year there was 17 Daytona Prototypes in the 24-hour field. Next month Rolex Series officials expect more than 30 DPs to battle for overall Rolex 24 race honors. This time around Howard-Boss Motorsports will field two Pontiac-powered Crawfords. The No. 2 Daytona Prototype will team two Indy Racing League regulars with a couple of proven road course racers. The driver lineup shows Milka Duno, Venezuela; Dan Wheldon, England; and the Franchitti brothers, Dario and Marino, from Scotland. Duno teamed with Andy Wallace and captured two Rolex Series races during the 2004 season. Dario Franchitti and Wheldon hail from the IRL while Marino saw spot road racing duty last year. The other Howard-Boss entry, the No. 20 Daytona Prototype, has Tony Stewart, Jan Lammers and Wallace. They will battle an all-star lineup of drivers swarming in from NASCAR, IRL and Champ Car, plus drivers from a rival sportscar tour and former Formula One aces. "I'm doubly excited this year," Howard said. "It looks like an unbelievable lineup of cars. We're going to have to get at the top of our game to be competitive." Max Crawford, who built the cars, is thrashing on the 2005 models to get them up to speed. "Sorting out new aero, engine and chassis," said Crawford. "We have a myriad of problems. I'm pretty apprehensive after looking at the field. It's pretty intimidating. We've got a lot of work to do." Compounding the problem, to a degree, is the fact Dario Franchitti hasn't seen a road course in nearly three years. Through last season, the IRL ran only oval courses. And, Franchitti has never raced at Daytona. "I've heard cars slide off the banking when it's cold," he said with a chuckle. "I can now see how that could happen." He was behind the wheel in the morning session and had offered a favorable report. "My first impression, the car is really good," he said. "My first couple of laps, I stayed out of the way because I had to figure out which way the track went." Odd thing about these Franchitti brothers; they operate on the same brain wave. "My mother claims we share a brain cell and that we don't function well when we are apart," Marino said. "She says it is better when we are together. We have a tendency to finish each other's sentences and know what each other is thinking. "We had the same feeling for the car straight off the bat. We're trying to work to that point where we are all comfortable with the car." ORIGINAL STORY-Daytona Beach News Journal
Great race, but poor scheduling
By Chris Gill As of press time early today, there were 10 racers who call the Nextel Cup Series their home and three IndyCar Series regulars entered in Rolex 24 at Daytona. Testing begins this weekend for Jim France's sports car pet project, with the race slated for Feb. 5-6. The Rolex 24 is without question the most prestigious sports/road racing event on this side of the planet and is the first of the American road racing triple crown - along with the 12 Hours of Sebring (March) and Six Hours of The Glen (June). Among the most notable names from NASCAR on the entry list are defending Nextel Cup champion Kurt Busch, the last Winston Cup champ Matt Kenseth, would-be champion Jimmie Johnson, 2002 Cup champ Tony Stewart, up-and-coming Chip Ganassi teammates Jamie McMurray, Casey Mears and Greg Biffle. Lone Star State brothers Terry and Bobby Labonte have even gone out of character and strayed from just stock-car racing. The Indy Racing League will follow its 2003 IndyCar champ Scott Dixon, 2004 Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy Rice and Darren Manning in the twice-around-the-clock enduro. Champ Car's only star, Paul Tracy has penned his name on the list and even Rob Dyson will rejoin the Grand American Rolex Series after a two-year hiatus from the very foundation he helped construct. The Daytona Prototype class has grown to 30 cars this year, which is more than half of the cars entered in the Rolex 24. Thirty cars in the premier class is unprecedented in domestic auto racing, even during IMSA's salad days. And this season, Grand-Am officials further streamlined the GT class, cutting it from two classes to one. That's compelling stuff for even the casual gearheads. But let's revisit the date - Feb. 5-6. Does the sixth of February ring a bell? Yup, it's the Super Bowl. Guess where the NFL's championship game/unofficial national holiday is being held this year. That's right, Jacksonville, Fla., less than 100 miles from Daytona Beach, Fla. on I-95. Every news outlet in the state of Florida - the Daytona International Speedway's core audience - will send their best writers, columnists, producers, anchors and cameramen to Jacksonville for the biggest sporting event in the country. The interns and agate clerks will be covering the Rolex 24 with point-and-shoot cameras. It's a shame. The Rolex 24 appears to have recaptured a lot of the prestige it lost when Andy Evans blew up sports car racing in the late 1990s. It's attracting the biggest names in American motorsports again. The size and quality of the field is better than at any time this scribe can remember. Gearheads are excited about it again. But it won't get the attention it deserves because Grand-Am made a severe scheduling gaffe - inking the kick-off to Speedweeks on a day enjoyed by more people than Christmas, rather than looking at Jan. 29-30 when there is no football being played. The Rolex 24 could have been a lead story, now it will appear in the brief rail in Monday, Feb. 7 editions. |
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