Lexus wins Rolex

[aeronca65t]

Chip G. and his Riley/Lexus won the Rolex 24. His drivers were two Champ Car guys and a NASCAR driver. Congrats to them! (I'm exhausted after one 2-hour stint in an enduro! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/driving.gif).

And Pobst got a well-deserved GT win in his German Corvair (and the Pontiac GTO scored a podium finish).

Several of my fellow EMRA racers were down for the event as well. One of our season champs, Gerry, missed our awards dinner last night because he was doing race-strategy for the #22 Fiorano Porsche (seen in backsground below).

 

[AngliaGT]

German Corvair - that took me at least 5 seconds to get!

- Doug

 

[DrEntropy]

Same guys wot built the "German Camaro"... 928.

 

[MGA Steve]

[ QUOTE ]
Chip G. and his Riley/Lexus won the Rolex 24. . . . And Pobst got a well-deserved GT win in his German Corvair (and the Pontiac GTO scored a podium finish).

[/ QUOTE ]Yea, I blew most of the weekend watching it on Speed!

The best interview of the 24 hours was with Bobby Rahal and his son--a 17-YEAR OLD son who was driving a GT Porsche! Bobby said the high school was very understanding about his son missing a week of school to drive in the Rolex 24-Hours at Daytona--I'll just bet they were. And you couldn't wipe the grin off that kid's face with a Brillo pad!

I can't even imagine putting my sons in a Porsche GT-R when they were 17, much less letting them drive as fast as they could go on a banked oval for 2.5 hours stints! And one of my sons drove a Porsche in high school (and he probably drove it as fast at it would go), but it was nothing like those GT Porsches.

 

[AngliaGT]

Obviously,your son was born into the wrong family!
I wonder how many of these kids with famous Fathers -
- Rahal,ale Jr.,etc. would even get a second glance if
it weren't for their last name (or family money)?

- Doug

 

[aeronca65t]

Actually, these young kids in endurance racing are not that unique, and several are not from big-name race families.

Two 16-year olds (Lux and Hessert) were scheduled to race in this years Rolex. Both of them have Dads who are amateur racers, but that's about it. Hessert is from NJ and has a background racing TQ midgets.

Red Bull is pushing a lot of these young drivers to keep up with the "farm league" system of racing in Europe.

By the way, a team of three 16-year old boys finished around 5th in class last year in the Daytona 24 hours in their Porsche (they were "Team 16", natch /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif )

Speed TV did an interview with these three and all were nice, well-spoken, clean-cut kids who seemed amazed at their own good fortune. They were a heck of lot more appealing than many of the "scholars" in college sports that I've seen on TV.

 

[MGA Steve]

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, these young kids in endurance racing are not that unique, and several are not from big-name race families.

[/ QUOTE ] Yea, but a lot were big-names--names like Mears, Gurney, Petty, Rahal, etc., were sprinkled throughout the field. And it wasn't the "old man" driving. About the only names I didn't hear were Andretti and Unser.

But I'll admit, most of their interviews were low-key--none of that "look at me, I am great" attitude you see in so many team sports on American TV. And Dan Gurney's son was the spitting image of his father when his photo was in every car magazine back in the 1960s!

One of the interesting aspects of watching the race was the variety of motorsports that the drivers came from. One team had retired NASCAR racer Rusty Wallace paired with first-year IRL phenom Danica Patrick. A good ol' Southern boy (emphasis on "ol'") and a 23-year old Northern girl--you can't get much different than that! And in nearly every interview, the drivers--no matter which type of car they normally drove--mentioned the word "fun." /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/driving.gif