NEWS
Grand Am: Daytona 24 Suntrust Report
There is no such thing as certainty when it comes to endurance racing. Still, nobody – but nobody – expected this.
Just 30 minutes into the 50th anniversary edition of the prestigious Rolex 24 At Daytona that kicked off Saturday afternoon, the No. 10 SunTrust Corvette Dallara of Wayne Taylor Racing was pulled into the garage for the second time in a three-lap span by co-driver Max Angelelli with what was ultimately diagnosed as valvetrain issues. Two hours of investigation and efforts to rectify the problem could not make returning to the 24-hour race a viable option, so the decision was made to retire the car during the 6 o’clock hour.
“There was a problem in the valvetrain and, quite honestly, we’re not exactly sure what it is, but there’s a problem enough for us to pull the car out,” said team owner Wayne Taylor, a two-time Rolex 24 winner whose most recent victory was for SunTrust Racing in 2005. “It’s really disappointing but, at the same time, this is what happens in this kind of racing. We clarified with GRAND-AM that both Max and (full-time co-driver) Ricky (Taylor) will get points based on the fact that (Angelelli) did do his 30 minutes and, because of catastrophic failure, the second driver automatically gets points. Even though there was a statement on TV that Max might have over-revved the engine, that’s absolutely not the case. We will go on from here with 14th-place points, which puts us 18 points down (in the championship). We came into this weekend feeling very upbeat. Everybody, all of the support we’ve had from General Motors, SunTrust, Dallara and Corvette, everybody, we’ll just go back, regroup and we’ll go to the next event. We’ve never had an engine problem in all the time we’ve run the Chevrolet engine program, so this is the first time. There was truly nothing we were worried about. In fact, this is probably the one 24-hour, I think we all felt, the only thing we were worried about was traffic, and we didn’t have any issues. It really caught us by surprise.”
After having dominated the Roar Before the 24 test days earlier this month with their brand new Corvette bodystyle, Angelelli, Ricky Taylor and third co-driver Ryan Briscoe from the IZOD IndyCar Series were certainly regarded among the favorites to bring home the first-place trophy Sunday afternoon. The SunTrust car was fastest after the weekend’s opening practice Thursday morning, and quite methodically qualified on the front row that afternoon – without even the slightest hint of a problem all the while.
“We had no indication,” Angelelli said. “We tested the engine yesterday, and it was all good.”
Angelelli and the rest of the 60-car field got off to a clean start when the green flag fell this afternoon. He stayed in close pursuit of polesitter Ryan Dalziel in the No. 8 Starworks Motorsport Ford Riley for the first five laps, then yielded second place to a hard-charging Oz Negri in the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Ford Riley. At the 25-minute mark, Angelelli reported a suspicious change in the sound of the motor and he was quickly directed to the garage, where the SunTrust crew replaced the electronic control unit and sent him back out on track. Before he could complete another tour of the 3.56-mile, 12-turn Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course, Angelelli reported a noticeable vibration and a loss of power. He went back to the garage and, two hours later, the SunTrust team’s race was over.
“It’s been such a big build up for this race, and it is the 50th anniversary,” Ricky Taylor said. “With our new car, there is a lot of excitement. The guys gave done so much work at the shop – put in numerous 12- to 18-hour days. It is really tough. Now, we have over a month until our next race. I know we’ll come back at Barber (Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala.) and redeem ourselves. There are 14 (Daytona Prototype) cars in this race. So, with a finish like this, it is hard to make up points. At the 24-hour, we always have the most cars of any other race, so we are losing more points than we can gain in any other single race with a finish like this. We’ll just have to go out there and pick up where we left off at the end of last season and just win a lot of races.”
“It is just tremendously disappointing,” added Briscoe, regular teammate to Helio Castroneves and Will Power at Penske Racing. “The effort that everyone on the whole team put in, and Wayne, Max, Ricky, the engineers, all the mechanics, this is a big race for this whole team and I’m just proud to be a part of it. I still am. Obviously, it hurts right now not to have a shot at winning the 50th. This is definitely very similar to having the strongest month of May at Indy and the going out in the opening laps of the Indy 500. I think GRAND-AM did an amazing job of promoting this event. The turnout today was huge. There is a great vibe around this championship at the moment and about this race. Just being a part of it would have been nice. Just being a part of the 24-hour at the end is very special. We hate packing up now and we are only a couple of hours into the race. We are all sort of hanging our heads a bit low right now but proud of the work everyone did.”
