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Created on Wednesday, 28 January 2015 10:26

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• Chip Ganassi Racing wins a record, sixth Rolex 24 at Daytona on Continental Tires.

• It’s an American sweep across all four classes in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship

Daytona Beach, FL – January 25, 2015.  Most people will tell you it’s a feat to win one Rolex 24 at Daytona races but to win six, is simply unprecedented. Chip Ganassi accomplished just that at the 53rd running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona with IndyCar drivers, Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan, along with NASCAR star’s, Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson, driving in the No. 02 Target Ford EcoBoost/Riley. With the win, McMurray joined A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti as the only drivers to win both the Daytona 500 and Rolex 24.

In the closing hour it appeared as if Dixon would have to hold off a charging, Jordan Taylor, in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Corvette DP but a miscalculation over Taylor’s driving time brought the No. 10 down pit road for a driver change under the final caution. Ricky Taylor took over but was unable to catch Dixon posting a third-place finish w/brother Jordan and co-driver, Max Angelelli. Once the No. 10 came down pit road, the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Corvette DP was in position to challenge the No. 02 but Sebastien Bourdais fell 2.267 seconds shy of a back-to-back win. Bourdais, Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa posted a second-place finish.

PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Wins in PC The No. 54 CORE autosport ORECA FLM09 dominated 23 of the 24 hours with drivers Jon Bennett, Colin Braun, Mark Wilkins and James Gue but contact with another car in the final hour send Braun into the wall, ending the team’s hope for back-to-back wins. The incident allowed the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Cuttwood/Spyder Orafol ORECA FLM09 Prototype Challenge (PC) entry to win with drivers Tom Kimber-Smith, Mike Guasch, Andrew Novich and Andrew Palmer.

Viper Makes it an American Sweep It was an emotional win in the GT Daytona (GTD) class for the No. 93 TI Automotive/ViperExhcnage.com Dodge Viper SRT GT3-R and drivers Ben Keating, Al Carter, Dominik Farnbacher, Kuno Wittmer and Cameron Lawrence. Following Dodge’s announcement at the end of 2014 that it would not return to racing, the win was a sweet one that made it an American sweep with Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge sharing the spoils of victory.

NOTEABLE •    Ganassi’s sixth win gives him a batting average of .500 as he’s won six of 12 Rolex 24 races he’s entered. •    The No. 07 SpeedSource Mazda Prototype led its first laps with driver, Tom Long. This marked the first time a diesel-powered car led the Rolex 24. •    The No. 52 PC entry was without power steering for the final 14 hours of the 24 hour race with Guasch and Novich triple stinting sans power steering. •    The No. 93 GTD entry changed tires following qualifying and was moved to the back of the GTLM/GTD grid, starting last in a 53-car field. That didn’t slow them down as they found their way to the front and to the win. •    In a case of man versus nature, the No. 44 Magnus Racing Porsche 911 GT America with Andy Lally behind the wheel, went to the paddock with an oil leak. Upon further inspection, turns out the car had hit a possum that broke the splitter and tub and entered the front of the car. The team did return to race action.

QUOTEABLE Jamie McMurray, driver – No. 02 Target Ford EcoBoost/Riley “The tires were good and it's really hard to explain to fans just how slick the tires are when it's cold out. Coming from NASCAR, the first corner, on new tires, is where you have the most grip and then it just gets worse from there on out where here, it takes like three or four laps to get going. You have to be really careful leaving the pits, pit road is extremely narrow here so it's hard to get up to speed but once you get up to speed, it's crazy how much grip you have. The biggest thing in the morning is when the dew sets in on the track and how slick it is.”

Ricky Taylor, driver – No. 10 Konica/Minolta “We were able to double stint in the night then during the day the track got really greasy so we were not able to double stint just because the advantage to having new tires was a little bit greater. The plan was, that last run we were doing a stint and a half because the drop-off wasn't too bad and the advantage of hot tires leaving the pits was greater.”

Ben Keating, driver – No. 93 TI Automotive/ViperExhcnage.com Dodge Viper SRT GT3-R “We feel like our car is really good on tires in the middle of a stint. We really felt like we made up good time there. We felt like it was important to save our tires, so we only used two sets in practice which left us with 26 sets for the race. I don't think we used that many but the Continental tires were phenomenal, they made for a car that was easy to drive fast.”

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