Race Report: Grand Am Rolex Utah 250

Sept. 13, 2010 - PRLog -- GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing’s Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty, who had an off on the first turn of the first lap, came back to finish second in Daytona Prototypes, with #10 SunTrust Racing’s Max Angelelli and Ricky Taylor, son of SunTrust Racing owner Wayne Taylor, rounding out the podium.

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After the race, Memo Rojas told SPEED-TV, “It’s amazing I can’t believe we got the ninth win of the season and finished in this way. Thanks, Telmex-Ganassi Racing, for an awesome year, and thanks, Scott, for a great drive today.”

Good pitwork helped give the #01 BMW Riley of Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas the lead and the win. (Brian Cleary/Getty Images)
Scottt Pruett had similar feelings. ‘It’s just been unbelievable. Excellent teamwork—all the Ganassi guys, Steve Dinan, BMW, of course Telmex. Memo’s done an awesome job. It’s just been a picture-perfect year.”

The Telmex Ganassi Racing BMW-Riley led only the first lap of the race until the first pit stop, where they leapfrogged the #10 Ford-Dallara of Taylor/Angelelli after Angelelli had stalled his car leaving his pit stall.

From that point on, there was no catching the #01 BMW-Riley. It was the Ganassi team’s ninth win of the 2010 season, breaking the previous seven-win record set by the #99 Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing duo in 2007. The Ganassi drivers won the 2010 championship at the previous race, the Montreal 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

In the GT class, the #57 Stevenson Camaro of Andrew Davis and Robin Liddell took the honors ahead of team car #97, driven by Jan Magnussen and Gunter Schaldach, and the #68 SpeedSource Mazda RX-8 of Adam Christodoulou and John Edwards.

“We’re really happy for Stevenson Motorsports, and GM Racing, getting the Camaro up there for the first time,” Liddell told Speed.

“We were so close at the last race and but we had problems at the end. The Corvette pipped us but it was a GM clean sweep.”

By virtue of their sixth place finish in their class, Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato win the GT championship honors in their #69 SpeedSource Mazda RX-8

With the racing season over, the teams will start preparing for the historic 24 Hours of Daytona, set for Jan. 29, 2011. Until then, the championship victors will savor their hard-earned gains while the rest devise strategies and improvements to topple the Ganassi and SpeedSource teams in Daytona Prototype and Grand Touring, respectively.

Kevin Walker is a motorsports journalist from Flat Rock, Michigan.