Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty stretched the performance of their Pirelli P Zeros to take their first victory of the 2010 season in the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Chevrolet Riley and claim the $20,000 Pirelli P Zero Club Daytona Prototype “triple bonus” that went along with it. In the GT division, SpeedSource scored an incredible top-three podium sweep with its potent trio of Mazda RX-8s that was led by the winning No. 70 Castrol Syntec car of Sylvain Tremblay and Jonathan Bomarito.
“We did more miles on our first set of Pirellis than anybody else today,” said Fogarty who drove over 90 minutes in his opening stint on a single set of tires. “We did 165 miles on the Pirellis and we were still running there at the end. We really took the Pirellis to the limit and they held in there. It is a tough, demanding place and the Pirellis worked.”
The winning GAINSCO Daytona Prototype led the No. 01 TELMEX/Chip Ganassi Racing BMW Riley of Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas across the finish line by 3.674 seconds. It was the first time in three races, and just the third time this season, that the No. 01 didn’t win a race. However, the Ganassi group continues to lead the GRAND-AM Rolex Series Daytona Prototype Team and Driver Championships with 267 points.
In GT racing, Tremblay and Bomarito won their second race of the season and led teammates John Edwards and Adam Christodoulou, in the No. 68 Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development Mazda RX-8, across the line by .170 of a second. Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato finished third in the No. 69 FXDD Mazda RX-8 and now lead Tremblay by just eight points in the GT championship, 262-254.
“The Pirellis performed really well today,” Segal said. “The weather was obviously a lot hotter than it is at most other races, which really taxes the tires. It might not be the most demanding track for the tire, but definitely the weather put them to the test and our Pirellis worked really well. We definitely made some big changes this weekend to accommodate the track and give the tires what they wanted, and in the race it worked perfectly.”
As a repeat race winner this season, the victory by the No. 70 Mazda team may make Sunday’s record $20,000 P Zero Club payout in New Jersey a short lived record. A five-race rollover bonus of $30,000 will be up for grabs for any eligible first time 2010 GT winners in the next race at Watkins Glen in August.
