RacingNation.com
Home / IndyCar Series / Pruett-Rojas Roll To Rolex Series Victory At Barber

Pruett-Rojas Roll To Rolex Series Victory At Barber

Leeds, Ala. – Veteran driver Scott Pruett and teammate Memo Rojas rolled to victory in The Porsche 250 at Barber Motorsports Park before a sun-drenched crowd. The race marked the third Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series event of the 2010 season.

For the winning TELMEX Chip Ganassi with Felix Sabates BMW Riley team, they won for the second time in three tries this season. Pruett’s Rolex Series victories now total 24.

Coming into the race, Pruett and Rojas held a six-point advantage in the Daytona Prototype point standings and with the victory their lead extended to 11 points. Although the Barber race was held earlier in the season than in the past, the Barber winners have gone on to earn the championship in six of the previous seven events. Pruett and Rojas won the race in 2008 and went on to secure the championship.

Rojas started the race and due to an early pit stop, he was mired in the standings before catching up with leaders 30 circuits into the event. Once near the front, he overtook Mike Forest (Starworks Motorsport) and Mark Wilkins (AIM Autosport) for the lead on the 38th circuit.

The potent winning BMW Riley showed its strength immediately with first Rojas and later Pruett leading 69 laps of the 108-lap event, including all but two of the final 71 stanzas. At the end, their margin of victory was an amazing 6.870 seconds.

“Things went very well for us,” Rojas said. “After the first yellow flag, everyone took a different strategy and we ended up in the middle of the pack. While caught in traffic, I had a lot of fun battling with everyone.”

Pruett took over on the 64th lap and by then Rojas had built up a commanding lead, which made Pruett’s job somewhat easy. “Memo (Rojas) did a good job,” Pruett said. “My only problem was the rubber pick-up, which made the car difficult to drive. It took two or three turns before you felt like the car wasn’t going to get away from you.”

Of note, Trevor Montgomery, a tire changer on the winning car twisted his ACL during an exhibition tire change prior to the race, and he was replaced by Blair Julian of Scott Dixon’s IndyCar. “It was a good thing our IndyCar team was here today,” Pruett stated.

Second place went to the Crown Royal XR Ford Riley (Michael Shank Racing) driven by Ozz Negri Jr. and John Pew.

“I drove as hard as I could even though there was a lot of rubber build-up on the track,” Negri said. “We are very happy with second place, as we are a good team with good equipment.”

Added Pew, “We had a good start to the race, although we did struggle with grip. Our car set-up helped us, and I knew Ozz (Negri) would do what he does best when he took over the car.”

Dalziel had a late race battle with Memo Gidley before the former nailed down third place with co-driver Forest in the new Starworks Motorsport BMW Riley.

Earlier Dalziel tangled with Max Angelelli with the latter spinning off the track eventually dropping from competition.

“Third place is a bittersweet finish for us,” Dalziel said. “I would like to have had an opportunity to run with the leaders but that incident (with Angelelli) threw me off line.”

Gidley and co-driver Dion von Moltke put the Doran Ford into fourth place with David Donohue and Darren Law taking fifth in the Brumos Racing Porsche.

Angelelli and Ricky Taylor (SunTrust Racing Ford) were scored 26th after completing 80 laps and the GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Chevrolet of Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney were 29th after completing only 20 laps. The latter car suffered an apparent motor problem.

In GT competition, three Mazda RX-8s swept the podium with the SpeedSource duo of Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato scoring the victory. The Racers Edge Motorsports team of Todd Lamb and Jordan Taylor garnered second place followed by Jonathan Bomarito and Sylvain Tremblay in another Speed Source entry.

Share Button