Grand-Am – VIR 400 – Preview
Lots Of News, Not All Good

The sad news arrived yesterday (Wednesday, April 25) that Robert F. “Bob” Snodgrass, Jr. passed away the previous evening, at home in Jacksonville. Bob Snodgrass was President and CEO of Brumos Motor Cars, Inc., Brumos Porsche, Lexus of Jacksonville and Brumos Racing.

We’ll pay tribute to this fine man in due course.

Still with sad news, Grand-Am officials announced a few days ago that the DP and GT teams will display the Virginia Tech University logo on their race cars this weekend, in tribute to the victims of last week's tragedy.

So it’s Virginia International Raceway this weekend – for the first of the split races. Both are set to be 400 km / 150 minute events, but the GTs will race on Saturday, the DPs on Sunday. They’ll be separate again at Laguna Seca next month.

Grand-Am has announced some unusual twists to the format and “will be evaluating the following procedures during the upcoming races”.

There’s the “Second Chance (yet to be sponsored) rule”, wherein the highest placed lapped car at the time of the wave by at the end of a full course caution will be waved by the overall race leader and get a lap back.

Then there’s the “Mandatory Pit Stop rule”, which demands that all cars must make a pit stop, coming to a complete stop, within the opening 45 minutes of the race. Cars must enter pit lane for the stop before the conclusion of 45 minutes. Cars failing to make that pit stop will not be scored until they make the stop.

Finally, and this is where it gets really confusing, there are changes to the qualifying procedures. This is how Grand-Am explains it:

“Grand-Am may assign qualifying positions. Ordinarily during the pit selection process each team representative will draw from a selection of coins or similar object. Five of those coins will be numbered from one through five. All the rest will have no numbers assigned. The numbered coins will represent the first five cars to line up for qualifying (1-5). All other cars will be accepted as they arrive at pit entrance or the designated grid. Grand-Am will provide the staging area and/or procedure at each event. Rolex Series cars cannot present until 10 minutes before their scheduled qualifying time. Cars must present ready to go with driver strapped in. When cars roll out to pit lane they are required to go into the fast lane immediately. There may be times that Grand-Am Officials may create a second line. Cars cannot go to their pit boxes.”

Oh, and the Sunoco GTX 260 fuel has gone up by 30 cents a gallon, to $5.80 per gallon.

So, back to the racing, and with three events run the DP and GT points look like this:

DP
1 Scott Pruett 93
2 Max Angelelli 92
Jan Magnussen 92
4 Patrick Carpentier 80
Milka Duno 80
6 Colin Braun 75
Max Papis 75
8 Mark Wilkins 71
9 Memo Rojas 68
10 JC France 67
Patrick Long 67
Jorg Bergmeister 67
etc.

GT
1 Nick Ham 96
Sylvain Tremblay 96
3 Carlos de Quesada 79
Jean-Francois Dumoulin 79
5 Paul Edwards 77
Kelly Collins 77
7 Leh Keen 75
Dirk Werner 75
9 Greg Wilkins 70
Dave Lacey 70
11 Andy Lally 69
Dominik Farnbacher 69
RJ Valentine 69
Emil Assentato 69
Nick Longhi 69
16 Tim Lewis Jr 66
Leighton Reese 66
etc.

The DP entry comprises what seems to have settled down to be a regular, about 20 car entry. One of those is the Howard Motorsports Crawford Porsche of Rob and Chris Dyson, and it’s the addition of this car that prevents it being three, single non-Rileys against all the other cars (Rileys).

So it’s 16 Rileys against two Crawfords (Howard and AJR), one Doran (the factory car) and one Fabcar (the Cheever entry).

TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates has taken over the #19 Finlay Motorsports Crawford entry, which now becomes yet another Riley, Lexus powered like the team’s #01 car.

"With the amazing growth of the Grand-Am series we realized that we needed to find a partner with the kind of technical resources needed to stay competitive in the series," explained Rob Finlay.

Ganassi’s Scott Pruett leads the points going into the fourth round – and Ganassi was the Riley entrant responsible for testing the 2008 Pirelli rubber in a recent test at Homestead, which also saw Cheever Racing running a Fabcar, Doran Racing the #77 car and Max Crawford the #20 Howard Motorsports Crawford Pontiac. Testing then continued at Daytona.

"We are very pleased with the early efforts of Pirelli," said Grand-Am Director of Race Operations Scott Spencer. "The tires have come back from long runs showing good wear characteristics and great consistency in lap times. Overall, we have had a great introduction to Pirelli and their ability to produce race tires."

"For the first time out, I am impressed with the Pirelli's durability," added Scott Pruett. "The exciting thing is that we didn't have to do much changing to the setup. We only had to make minor, minor changes to what we raced here at Daytona and at Homestead, and that is very encouraging for the crew and all of us."

Andy Wallace was impressed with the longevity of the Pirellis, particularly at Daytona, where "we could double stint the tyres and still set the best lap at the end of the double stint. The tyres are also faster than the Hoosiers."

And so to VIR – where Pat Long and Mike Rockenfeller won last year, for Alex Job. That turned out to be their last win of 2006, and the last win for a Crawford chassis, although they came close at times. It’s been all Riley wins since last April. The most recent one was the Auberlen / Alhadeff Riley BMW victory at Homestead a month ago.

“It’s a great circuit with a nice combination of fast and slow turns all culminating in a long straight-away," comments pat Long. "It’s always important to qualify well at VIR as the track is a little narrow for passing. I’ll be anxious to see how our package performs here this year given we now have a lot more experience on the VIR road course than we did last year.”

“Patrick and Jörg are perfectly suited for this course and our Porsche-powered Crawford likes the demanding VIR layout which offers elements of various other tracks all in one," says Alex Job. "We’ve had a bit of a slow start to the season and this particular circuit offers an excellent opportunity for us to make a strong statement and start a serious run for the championship.”

With the Gainsco victory in Mexico, it’s been three months since either of the big two (Ganassi and SunTrust) has won a race, but both have won at VIR in the past.

With the GTs running separately, will the spectacle be improved, or not? Jean-Francois Dumoulin ought to know by the end of the weekend: he's in both races. Patrick Carpentier has had to drop out of the #11 SAMAX Riley owing to a family emergency, and Ryan Dalziel steps into this car, with the French Canadian.