DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Adoring fan response and fellow driver congratulations greeted Scott Pruett everywhere he went in the Daytona International Speedway garage Saturday morning in the hours just prior to the afternoon’s Rolex 24 At Daytona green flag.
The retiring five-time Rolex 24 overall winner was gracious and appreciative of the attention, however, he said he remained 100 percent committed to adding another trophy courtesy of his final career start this weekend.
“The intensity is starting to build,’’ Pruett said following the Rolex 24 drivers’ meeting Saturday morning. “It’s business as usual, but busier than usual,’’ he said smiling. “So much fun.’’
With the Chairman of IMSA, Jim France, on one side and IMSA CEO Ed Bennett on the other of Pruett, IMSA President Scott Atherton presented the great champion specially commissioned artwork depicting cars Pruett drove throughout his championship IMSA career.
“Wow, this is humbling and wonderful,’’ Pruett told the crowded meeting. “I hope you have a wonderful and safe race.’’
Pruett and his No. 14 3GT Racing Lexus RC F GT3 racing team will start fourth in the GT Daytona (GTD) class.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Legendary racer Dan Gurney, who passed away on Jan. 14 at the age of 86, is being honored throughout the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Cars and drivers throughout the field are paying tribute with commemorative car and helmet decals, the FOX Sports telecast has been dedicated to Gurney, and a Sam Posey written and narrated tribute will close the FOX network telecast just before it goes off air at 5 p.m. ET.
And leading the 2018 Rolex 24 At Daytona field around on its pre-race parade lap will be the No. 30 Lola T70 race car that Gurney drove to victory in the 1966 Can-Am race at Bridgehampton in New York. It was the only Ford-powered car ever to win a Can-Am race.
Among Gurney’s many other achievements as a driver, team owner and constructor was his Toyota-powered Eagle Mk III Prototype, in which PJ Jones set the all-time Rolex 24 At Daytona qualifying record that still stands today.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The eyes of the racing world will be on Daytona International Speedway for the next day and a half, as a field of superstar drivers will take on America’s most prestigious 24-hour race, the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
As expected, the field includes the world’s best sports car racers. But the field also features a number of greats from other forms of the sport as well, including Formula 1, NASCAR and IndyCar. Here’s a quick look:
Active Formula 1 Drivers (2): Fernando Alonso (two-time World Champion, 32 career Grand Prix victories) Lance Stroll (20 career Grand Prix starts)
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Race Winners (2): Juan Pablo Montoya (2 career victories) A.J. Allmendinger (1 career victory)
Indianapolis 500 Winners (4): Helio Castroneves (3 victories) Juan Pablo Montoya (2 victories) Ryan Hunter-Reay (1 victory) Scott Dixon (1 victory)
IndyCar Series Champions (4): Scott Dixon (4 championships) Juan Pablo Montoya (1 championship) Ryan Hunter-Reay (1 championship) Simon Pagenaud (1 championship)
In addition, the field include 14 drivers who have won at least one IndyCar race, more than 30 drivers who have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and nine drivers who started the 2017 Indianapolis 500.
Live television coverage of the Rolex 24 At Daytona begins in the U.S. on FOX at 2 p.m. ET, with complete streaming for 25 consecutive hours available on the FOX Sports GO app. IMSA Radio, in-car cameras and live Timing & Scoring are available on IMSA.com. IMSA Radio also will be broadcast via SiriusXM (Sirius Channel 138/XM 202/Internet App Channel 972).
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — AJ Allmendinger is an 11-time Rolex 24 At Daytona entrant and the 2012 overall race winner. Even though the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver sat out the famous 2017 running of the Rolex, he returns to the great race this weekend driving in a new class but carrying an old designation: “favorite.”
Allmendinger joins WeatherTech Championship contenders Katherine Legge, Alvaro Parente and Trent Hindman driving the No. 86 Acura NSX GT3 for his longtime friend Michael Shank.
It marks the first time Allmendinger, 37, has competed outside the Prototype class, but he is eager and enthused to try out his skills in the highly-competitive GT Daytona (GTD) class, dicing door-to-door with Ferrari, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes and Lamborghini.
“It’s always fun and this time definitely a different challenge,’’ said Allmendinger, who drives the No. 47 Kroger Chevrolet for JTG Daugherty Racing in NASCAR. “The GT class has always been so competitive and at times I think, the most competitive class of the three for sure — at least the most amount of cars with a chance of winning.”
Enjoying the experience is an important element to this race for Allmendinger, who won a Monster Energy Series race at Watkins Glen in 2014 to qualify for the NASCAR playoffs. He finished 27th in the points standings last season, however, and is eager for a good finish in the Rolex 24 to translate into a good start for the new Cup year.
Even having to learn a different type of race car has been a welcome challenge for Allmendinger, who will drive third in the rotation this weekend.
Race traffic will be much different for Allmendinger this time around the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course, too. Instead of being in the fastest of the cars, he will now have to navigate as they whiz by him. And it can be a delicate situation.
“It’s a different mental outlook,’’ Allmendinger said. “In the prototypes you’re always the aggressor. In traffic, you’re making the moves, you’re judging what you want to do. In the GT cars you’ve got to make the decision if you’re going to turn down and make the corner coming in … mentally on that side of it, it’s a big challenge figuring out how to race in the GT class.
“The best GT drivers know when to give up a pass and when to take the corner. That’s stuff I tried to learn in practice but I won’t know until I’m in the race.”
Even so Allmendinger has reason to be optimistic. He has six top-10 finishes in 11 Rolex starts including the win in 2012, a runner-up in his 2006 debut and a third-place finish in 2013.
“You know, this has always been my background,’’ Allmendinger said. “It’s no different than Kyle Larson, Ricky Stenhouse and Christopher Bell doing all the dirt racing they do. There are not a lot of guys in Cup anymore with the background of road racing.
“If I could do this [kind of racing] nine times a year I would. I just love road racing.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Standing in the rear of the media center at Daytona International Speedway on Friday afternoon, watching his sports car drivers informally take questions from a crowd of racing reporters, Chip Ganassi smiled and acknowledged people with a friendly nods and waves.
Should one of his Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GTs win the GTLM class in this weekend’s Rolex 24 At Daytona, it would be Ganassi’s 200th win as an owner in major league auto racing spanning sports car, IndyCar and NASCAR competition. His cars are starting third (No. 67) and fourth (No. 66) in class for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-opener.
And while Ganassi looked every bit his typical “calm, cool and collected” self about the historical opportunity, he quietly conceded that scoring such a victory would be impactful to him and to his team.
“I want to win the race, I’m not worried about number 200 or number 300,’’ Ganassi said. “But,” he conceded with a smile, “certainly to get the 200th at a historical event would be a feather in our cap.’’
The six multi-national, multi-talented drivers prepared to race for Ganassi this weekend are more candid about their desire to deliver the big win, in this big race for their boss.
“No pressure, right?’’ IndyCar driver and former series champion Sebastien Bourdais said with a grin Friday, following the Rolex 24 final practice session. “It’s a big, big deal for everyone on the team and within the organization. We’ve got the first shot at putting it (200) on the board so I don’t think it would be a bad association for Chip to have 200 synonymous with winning at Daytona. The story would be pretty cool.”
And that may be an understatement for the organization, whose six-driver lineup for the twice-around-the-clock race represents six different countries.
Bourdais, of France, will share the No. 66 Ford with Ganassi’s full-time IMSA drivers Joey Hand (USA) and Dirk Mueller (Germany).
Ryan Briscoe (Australia) and Richard Westbrook (England) are the full-time drivers of the No. 67 Ford, teaming in the endurance race with four-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon (New Zealand).
Ganassi’s teams have won the Rolex 24 a record six times overall and last year Hand Muller, and Bourdais captured the GTLM class victory in the Ford GT.
Hand was very aware of the team’s opportunity to score a historical win this weekend and certainly appeared confident about the team acquiring a new victor’s Rolex.
“What makes me feel good about this is coming here calm, having that confidence,’’ Hand said. “I don’t feel a lot of pressure here. A lot of that comes from the team, the way Chip runs the team you don’t feel a lot. You just do your job, but the expectation is high. Especially coming back as the defending champion of the race.
“I’ve been able to win my personal biggest races with Chip, so to win a 200th for Chip would be another big thing for me. I definitely think it’s possible. I’d love to do that.’’
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Fernando Alonso hasn’t been surprised by much on the track as he prepares for his first sports car endurance race this weekend in the Rolex 24 At Daytona. But the enormity of the world-class motorsports stadium and the passion of the fans have left an impression on the two-time Formula One world champion.
“It still surprises me, the venue, the speedway, every morning when I come here,” he said. “You pass around the grandstand from the outside and it’s just the size of everything is huge.”
Alonso participated in the three-day Roar Before The Rolex 24 test session in the No. 23 United Autosports Ligier LMP2, his first experience at Daytona. And he has seen a major transformation in the facility since that early January weekend.
“And now in the race weekend, compared to the test, you enter the circuit and the infield is full of RVs, full of fans. They are preparing their BBQ for tomorrow,” Alonso observed on the Friday entering the race. “The passion for the motorsport … the people are ready to enjoy the event … it’s not only a race. They are ready to spend 24 hours here enjoying and watching cars.”
After tallying 32 wins in Formula One, Alonso was in position to contend for the win at the Indianapolis 500 last year, another notable “one-off” race entry for the Spaniard. But he observes that preparation for the 24-hour endurance race this weekend varies greatly from what he went through for the 200-lap spectacle that took just over three hours to run last year.
For Indianapolis, he noted that race preparation was precise and, “I think we had the race in our minds, in our heads, before entering the start.”
Days after younger brother Kyle Busch made critical comments on the emphasis of NASCAR marketing its young stars at NASCAR Media Tour Presented by Charlotte Motor Speedway — and the young stars subsequently firing back — the elder Kurt Busch backed up and summarized his sibling’s point of view during an appearance on “The Domenick Nati Show.”
While Kurt Busch said he agreed “in certain aspects” of Kyle’s comments while disagreeing with other parts of his argument, Kurt Busch summed up what he thought the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was driving at — while also adding fuel to the preseason war of fiery words.
“What I think he is trying to say is that we are promoting these guys and they don’t have the race wins yet,” said the Stewart-Haas Racing driver. “I mean there is ‘zero’ in the win column for a guy like Chase Elliott, there’s zero for Bubba Wallace, Erik Jones, all those guys, you know.
“You know (Kyle) Larson’s out there; he’s young; he’s winning. They need to push him. I see him as a future champion, but I think what Kyle is saying is these guys have been given a free pass, so to speak, to become a superstar and we haven’t seen the success on track translate to what’s being shown to the world, so to speak.”
DAVIDSON, N.C. — One races cars for a living. One plays basketball. Both have their rookie stripes.
That shared first-year experience as Darrell Wallace Jr. and Malik Monk rise up the ranks helped bring the pair together for a unique opportunity this week.
Monk visited the Richard Petty Motorsports shop Tuesday with Wallace as his tour guide as the new No. 43 Chevrolet driver gets ready for his freshman season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. Thursday night at Davidson Day School, Wallace participated in a workout with the Charlotte Hornets’ first round (No. 11 overall) 2017 NBA draft pick.
“It was cool to cross paths and give him a little taste of our world,” Wallace told NASCAR.com after the basketball workout wrapped up Thursday night.
Since NASCAR is in its offseason, Wallace is looking forward to getting Monk out to the track to “enjoy a race and see what goes on.” The pair hopes that will work out for one of the three race weekends that Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts in 2018. Wallace will see Monk’s Hornets take on the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night.
Monk, who grew up in Arkansas and is a NASCAR fan, did get some simulator time against Bubba and gave the driver of the famed No. 43 a run for his money on a fast lap at Daytona.
“I thought for sure I’d beat his lap on the first lap but it took me two laps to get him,” Wallace quipped. “So once the momentum got built up I had him but only by a tenth.”
Upon walking through the shop, Monk was able to draw a parallel from the hoops world to NASCAR.
“Just seeing how the cars get put together. How the whole team works together and they all know what pieces they are working on. It’s just like basketball,” Monk told NASCAR.com. “The whole team has to be together if they want to make something perfect.”
The biggest lesson for Monk was in how Wallace carried himself around the shop.
“He is very comfortable,” Monk said. “Not letting anything get overwhelmed. Just keeping his head on straight and just being humble. I think I can take a lot from that.”
The basketball workout saw Monk’s trainer, Nathan Conley of Court XIV, work the duo through a series of drills over the course of about an hour that focused mainly on ball handling and shooting. A five-year veteran of the Denny Hamlin-formed Hoop Group, Wallace was able to hold his own, while the 19-year-old NBA freshman showcased his long-range shooting ability. At the tail end of the workout, Wallace got to wear a pair of strobe glasses to help train the connections between one’s eyes, mind and body. This sort of training helps to slow the game down and allow a player to perceive greater detail.
RJ Kraft/NASCAR Digital Media
“To see how quick he is with his feet and hands and not looking down, looking up the whole time, that’s impressive,” Wallace said of Monk. “He’s only 19 so I’m pretty sure he picked up a ball pretty much whenever he first could. That’s the same thing for me with racing. So once we get into our sports we know it like that back of our hands. We can do great things with the equipment that we have right in front of us so it’s impressive to see him ball.”
Being rookies in their sports allows for some similar experiences that each can draw on. “We actually talked about that on Tuesday,” Monk said. “You got to prepare mentally. You got to be mentally tough to go around the track for 500 miles. Coming into a rookie season you don’t know what to expect.”
Monk’s rookie campaign has had some peaks and valleys through the first half of the NBA season and Wallace said he could certainly relate to that as he matriculated up NASCAR’s national series ladder.
“You got to trust the process and your big break is going to come through. My big break came through this year,” Wallace said, “so we’re excited to see what we can do this year. It’s just a step. It’s one hurdle you got to get over and after that, it’s not going to be a smooth sail but you can set sail from there.”
The youth movement in NASCAR is in full swing, and Kyle Larson believes fans are in for quite a treat over the next few years … or decades.
“There’s a lot of good drivers, a lot of young drivers,” Larson told NASCAR.com after announcing an expanded partnership with DC Solar. “It’s been really, really cool to see opportunities open up for a lot of young people. You know, I’m 25 and I’m kind of like the middle-age group. This is my fifth year in Cup which is crazy to think. It’s awesome to see.”
Among the up-and-comers is 2017 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion Christopher Bell, a driver Larson knows very well thanks to their shared passion for dirt racing.
Larson and the 23-year-old Bell are considered two of the best dirt drivers in NASCAR. Bell most recently bested Larson for his second consecutive Chili Bowl championship, but had help from an unfortunate blown engine from the California native’s car with less than 15 laps to go.
“We both have a lot of respect for each other” Larson said. “We race hard against each other. But we realize, I think, I’m not bragging about myself, but how talented … equally talented we both are as drivers. He definitely pushes me to be a better driver, and I think push him to do better.”
Larson doesn’t see any reason why he won’t continue to duel with Bell as he rises up through the NASCAR circuits. The two will compete against each other in a handful of Xfinity races in the 2018 season, with Bell as a full-time driver for Joe Gibbs Racing.
But Larson believes he will be revving up his engine next to Bell on Sundays sooner rather than later.
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t at least make the (Championship 4) at Homestead for the next two years,” Larson said. “And probably win a championship or two in those two years. Then he’ll be in the Cup at some point I’m sure in the near future. NASCAR fans are getting ready to be spoiled.”
The 2018 season also will bring a fresh start for the No. 42 team, which had four wins last year but fell on bad luck at the end of the season and into the playoffs. Four consecutive DNFs (Kansas, Martinsville, Texas, Phoenix) took Larson out of championship contention.
However, he feels confident that the momentum they earned from multiple trips to Victory Lane is what will carry over as the team gears up for the Daytona 500 — not the miscues.
“Last year, I didn’t know we were going to be that good,” he said. “Then we started off the year really good, and I was like ‘Wow we have a really good shot at a championship’ early on. We maintained that consistency and competitiveness. I hope that we can do that again.
“I feel like when you get close like we were last year, it pushes everybody to be as good or better than what we were. I expect that we will be contenders again.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One of the perks to winning the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship comes in May, when the voting panel convenes to deliberate on the next NASCAR Hall of Fame class. The previous season’s champion is among the few privileged who cast an official ballot.
That may not be Martin Truex Jr.’s last brush with the Hall of Fame, either.
The 2017 champion, Truex Jr. joined an absurdly elite group of NASCAR drivers to win a premier series championship — just 32 drivers own that distinction, and it’s the ultimate trump card when Truex Jr.’s name eventually appears on the ballot.
“That’s insane,” said Truex Jr., who presented NASCAR’s first champion Red Byron into the Hall of Fame earlier this month. “Yeah, I can’t believe that. Just to think ‑‑ yeah, that’s just crazy. Blows my mind.”
Strengthening Truex Jr.’s eventual case are his back-to-back NASCAR Xfinity Series titles in 2004-05, making him one of just five drivers to win titles in each of NASCAR’s top two series.
He enters 2018 primed to build on his career total of 15 wins following a prolific eight-win campaign.
“I never thought about it until Winston Kelley (Executive Director, NASCAR Hall of Fame) actually said it to me,” Truex Jr. said. “Before Christmas every year, our foundation, we go to Levine’s and walk around and hand out toys to all the kids, and I put my Santa hat on. Winston Kelley always goes there and helps, and he’s like, just out of the blue, we’re standing there talking and getting ready to go hand out toys, and he’s like, ‘You know, you’re pretty much a lock to get in here now.’
“He told me that, and I was like, ‘Well, I hadn’t even thought of that.'”
Another season like 2017 and Truex Jr. won’t need to think twice.
