Grand-Am, Rolex 24 At Daytona – Snippets
Aten Goes Home

The Rolex field is down to 49 following the withdrawal of the #00 Aten Motorsports Ferrari, in what appears to be the most bizarre of circumstances.

DSC came across the car in the garage during second practice, but it was utterly unattended and obviously not about to go anywhere. After the session, however, a source close to the team confirmed that the car had been withdrawn after they had allegedly received an ultimatum yesterday from a representative of the car’s owner – buy the car or don’t run. Faced with such an outrageous demand, Tony Dowe and his drivers basically said, “Bye, then!” So the car is simply awaiting collection and the drivers have gone home – a very sad end to such a promising project.

The new Continental tyres would appear to be producing very separate results in the two classes – the general feeling from the DP teams being that the grip comes in quicker than did the Pirellis, but that they don’t last as long; while the GT teams are reporting that they take longer to come in, but will have no problems lasting two stints. Krohn Racing have suggested that their Lola – which tends to be easy on the tyres anyway – may be able to double-stint in the night, but other teams are saying that a double-stint is out of the question.

The #7 Starworks Motorsport Riley sat out most of the second practice session, owing to a broken axle – it managed two slow laps at the end of the session – while things were going better for the #8; fourth in the second session.

Peter Baron revealed that the third Starworks car is a brand new chassis, and that the Ford engines in the cars are the 2010-spec; “The support from Ford has been excellent,” he said. “We get engineering support and even windtunnel time.”

Not so happy was Tomas Enge; the Czech driver having had his wallet stolen from the team truck this morning – one of several such thefts reported.

The SunTrust Dallara Chevrolet was fastest in the second session, as it knocked two-tenths off Montoya’s earlier time. The #60 Crown Royal MSR Riley was second fastest on 1:40.758, while Flying Lizard announced their presence with a 1:40.778 to take third-fastest.

In GT, the #67 TRG again set the fastest time – 1:48.998 being a slight improvement on the earlier time – while the #57 Camaro was again second after a similar improvement.

MH