Starworks, Magnus secure Indy, NAEC Rolex wins

Starworks Motorsport and Magnus Racing took the Daytona Prototype and GT class victories in the inaugural Brickyard Grand Prix for Grand-Am's Rolex Series at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Sebastien Bourdais took his first Rolex win with Alex Popow in the No. 2 Riley-Ford DP, with Magnus' pair of Andy Lally and John Potter scoring their second win of the season in the No. 44 Porsche GT3 Cup.

Both teams also took the championships in the three-race North American Endurance Championship, with respective cash bonuses of $100,000 (Starworks, DP) and $50,000 (Magnus, GT) for the honor. Starworks finished on the podium, with second, third and first results at Daytona, Watkins Glen and Indy, with Magnus adding the Indy win to its triumph at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January.

The event ended under caution after a three-hour race split between wet/dry conditions.

The sister Starworks car driven by Ryan Dalziel and Enzo Potolicchio led the most laps, 36 of 91, before Bourdais passed Dalziel on lap 75. Later contact between Dalziel and Juan Pablo Montoya affected the his and Potolicchio's overall championship position, as the duo fell 11 points back of Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas, who finished second.

“It was a pretty sweet achievement,” said Bourdais. “The car was so switched on from the test. To put it together was awesome.”

The No. 01 car was second ahead of SunTrust's No. 10, sporting a revised livery this race, the sister Ganassi car and No. 9 Action Express Corvette.

Starworks' Popow/Bourdais car was one of few DPs which didn't encounter some sort of problems, or the "chrome horn" employed by one of the TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates drivers. 

At half-distance, Rojas ran wide at Turn 6, the left-hander, then on the same lap pitched Ronnie Bremer's Stevenson Camaro into the wall on the front straight. Rojas caught Bremer, went to his outside exiting Turn 13 (oval Turn 1), bounced off the wall and back into Bremer, who then veered across the track into the outside retaining wall.

“He's passing where you can't pass, he needed to wait and be patient – you can't pass on the way out,” said an understandably frustrated Bremer.

Rojas avoided a penalty call, as did teammate Montoya in the heralded sister car co-driven by Jamie McMurray (who didn't actually race) and Scott Dixon, who started and ran as high as third from 11th on the grid. In his hour-and-a-half stint, Montoya hit Joao Barbosa (Action Express) and Dalziel (Starworks), pitching both into the gravel.

Starworks team principal Peter Baron in the heat of the moment after Dalziel's hit: “Montoya's here to do one thing, wreck our race and our championship. It was absolutely bogus. We told the series it was going to happen. The entire world knew he'd take somebody out. It didn't take Nostradamus to figure out Montoya was going to take somebody out.”

Spirit of Daytona, sporting a new G-Oil livery this race, had a broken axle early which sent its Corvette DP to the garage and out of contention. Action Express spent some time in the gravel with its two Corvettes. And GAINSCO/Bob Stallings, which took the pole by Jon Fogarty, fought visibility issues, was lapped and retired slightly with over an hour remaining. That left the historic names of Donohue (David, Action Express) and Gurney (Alex, GAINSCO) never in the running.

Elsewhere, Paul Tracy ran as high as fourth in the older Dallara-Ford for Doran Racing, but incurred a drive-through penalty for jumping a restart. Tracy and Dr. Jim Lowe ended in P6.

The win for Magnus in GT was particularly impressive given the damage incurred to its primary car from an electrical fire on the dashboard at Watkins Glen. In a back-up car, the second GT3 Cup that ran at the Rolex 24, the team re-assembled all the bits to make the race.

“It's very special. I felt more anxiety for this than the 24,” Potter said. “This was just down to the end. Crew did such a great job bringing the car back from the dead. We were just tooling around.”

GT saw Lally have to survive the several late-race restarts, in charges brought on from Jonathan Bomarito in the pole-sitting SpeedSource Mazda RX-8 and Leh Keen in the Brumos Racing Porsche. Bomarito made a late pass of Keen for second, but with the race ending under yellow, he was unable to make a final attempt to pass Lally. Bomarito co-drove with SpeedSource team principal Sylvain Tremblay, and Keen with Andrew Davis. DP attrition meant the top 10 GT cars finished in positions 5 through 14 overall.

“It's Indianapolis, and we've won. It didn't hit me until the end. I'm a fortunate guy,” Lally added, succinctly.

BMW and Ferrari got a car into the top five apiece, the Turner No. 94 (Bill Auberlen, Paul Dalla Lana, Billy Johnson) and AIM Autosport Team FXDD No. 69 (Jeff Segal, Emil Assentato) finishing behind the podium runners. The part-time Burtin Racing Porsche finished sixth with Claudio Burtin and Martin Ragginger behind the wheel. Only 10 of the 23 GT class entries finished on the lead lap.