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Survival of the fittest Corvette erases large deficit to win Rolex 24
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A Chevrolet C-5 Corvette erased a 26-lap deficit Sunday and won the Rolex 24-hours sports car endurance race, as the favored Dyson Racing entry ran into engine problems for the second consecutive year. The winning car, shared by Americans Chris Kneifel and Johnny O'Connell, Canadian Ron Fellows and Frenchman Franck Freon, gave Corvette its biggest sports car win. It also was the first time Chevy has won the overall title in America's most prestigious road race since Roger Penske's Chevrolet-powered Lola won in 1969 with Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons driving. The pole-winning Riley & Scott Ford, co-driven by Butch Leitzinger and Englishmen James Weaver and Andy Wallace, held off a strong challenge from a Ferrari 333SP prototype and was racing toward what would have been team owner Rob Dyson's third Daytona victory in five years. At 9:30 a.m., just 3 1/2 hours from the end of the grueling event, three-time race winner Leitzinger was at the wheel of the car when booming sounds erupted from the engine compartment and a puff of gray smoke signaled the end of its race. "It looks like it threw a rod on the front straight," Leitzinger said. "It just decided it was done and it blew up. No warning at all. It was a very major explosion." That sound, loud enough to be heard in the pits, gave the rain-drenched and attrition-filled race a new complexion. "We knew all we had to do was keep going, keep our pace and stay lucky," Fellows said. It wasn't that easy. The Canadian driver got into the yellow No. 2 Corvette for the final time just after the Dyson car was sidelined. It took Fellows 65 minutes to erase the big deficit and take the lead. He stayed in the car and was cruising until the gearbox began to overheat in the final hour. With less than 30 minutes remaining and a 19-lap lead, Fellows pulled the car onto pit lane and Team Corvette officials decided to play it safe and keep it parked until the final moments of the race. Fellows finally went out with less than 10 minutes left and ran three slow laps before taking the checkered flag for an eight-lap victory against the GT class Porsche driven by Mike Fitzgerald, Randy Pobst, Christian Menzel of Germany and Lucas Luhr of Monaco. Fellows pounded on the hood of the winning car after scrambling from the cockpit. "This is the culmination of a lot of people's vision,' said Fellows, who finished a close second last year in a Corvette, along with Kneifel and Justin Bell. "This is a tremendous, tremendous end to three years of effort." It is the second consecutive year in which the Grand American Road Racing series' featured Sports Racing prototypes have come up short because of mechanical ills and accidents, giving the victory to GTS class entries. A year ago, an engine problem cost the same Dyson car a win, slowing it in the final hours of the race and relegating the team to fourth place and best in class. A Dodge Viper came up with the win, with the runner-up Corvette finishing on the same lap. This time it was the Corvette that was able to take advantage of the situation, covering 656 laps and 2,335.360 miles on the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road circuit at an average of 97.306 mph. The runner-up Porsche, one of a record 34 that started in the 80-car field -- and the German make's 53rd class winner here -- also had to overcome problems. Fitzgerald, winner of the worldwide Porsche Cup last year, said he and his co-driver often couldn't see because "the windshield wipers weren't even touching the glass." Radio communication with the pits also was cut off because of wet wires, he said. The Ferrari of Ralf Kelleners of Germany, Allan McNish of Scotland, Eric van de Poole of Belgium and Australia's David Brabham -- the winner's most serious challenger -- quit with an overheating problem in the early morning hours while trailing by four laps. This apparently was the last race for the technically obsolete 333SP, a model that has won 36 races since it's introduction in 1994 and was run one more time in this event because of it's reliability. The Risi Competizione car is the last of its kind made by the Italian car manufacturer. "I believe this is the third time somebody has woken me up at an endurance race to tell me we were out," van de Poole said. "It's not a very pleasant experience." A lot of the attention before and during the race was focused on Team Corvette's second entry, co-driven by road racing veterans Andy Pilgrim and Kelly Collins and NASCAR stars Dale Earnhardt and son Dale Jr., both making their first sports car start. The No. 3 'Vette hung in gamely, overcoming transmission problems and a series of spins on the wet track to finish fourth, two laps behind the GT class Porsche GT3RS of Wolfgang Kaufmann of Germany, Ciril Chateau of France and Lance Stewart and 14 laps behind the winners. "It's an awesome car," the elder Earnhardt said of the Corvette. "If we hadn't had that trouble at the start with the transmission, we'd have been really good. I felt really good out there in the rain. ... It's been a fun experience." Jim Downing's Mazda Kudzu, co-driven by Howard Katz, A.J. Smith and Chris Ronson, led the Sports Racer class, finishing 11th overall, 32 laps behind the winner. A Nissan Lola driven by Andy Lally, Paul Macey of Canada and the English duo of Peter Seldon and Martin Henderson won the SRPII class, finishing 13th -- just ahead of the Dyson car. The American GT class win went to the Chevy Camaro of Kenny Bupp, Doug Mills, Dick Greer and Simon Gregg -- son of four-time Daytona winner Peter Gregg. That car finished 28th overall.
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