With three wins in the past five editions of the 24hours of Daytona, we could have expected Chip Ganassi Racing to take yet another win this year.
Scott Pruett and teammates Memo Rojas, Max Papis and Justin Wilson could not do better than a second place this time however. They finished second, 52.303 seconds behind winners Joao Barbosa, Terry Borcheller, Mike Rockenfeller and Ryan Dalziel. Scott Tucker, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Richard Westbrook and Lucas Luhr took the third place on the podium as a blocked belt cost them victory early Sunday morning. Ricardo Zonta, Tracy Krohn, Nic Jönsson et Colin Braun took the forth place of this very difficult race that started under caution because of massive accumulations of water all over the racetrack. Drivers had to be careful all race long not to slip away from the ideal race trajectory. As the rain stopped, drivers had to deal with very cold and windy temperatures. Those conditions forced several contenders to retire. Of them, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya and Jamie McMurray had to retire from a blown engine a little past midnight. Jimmie Johnson, Jon Fogarty, Alex Gurney and Jimmy Vasser suffered from an oil pump failure when they were fifth. A.J. Allmendinger, Michael Valiante, John Pew and Mark Patterson had to go back to the garage with a blown engine, with 75 minutes to go in the race. Polesitters Max Angelelli, Wayne Taylor, Rick Taylor and Pedro Lamy finished sixth as an early incident cost them a lot of time. In GT, Sylvain Tremblay, Nick Ham, David Haskell and Jonathan Bomarito took a second victory in three years as they overcame a seven laps deficit to give SpeedSource yet another honourable victory. The team can thank the other teams however as most of its success comes from its competitors misfortune. Many mechanical problems from adversary teams in front of them coupled with a very competitive mode allowed Tremblay and teammates to finish the race with a four laps’ advantage. Seth Neiman, Johannes van Overbeek, Jorg Bergmeister and Patrick Long took the second spot in front of Andy Lally, Wolf Henzler, Kelly Collins, Ted Ballou and Pat Flanagan that complete this first GT podium of 2010. This 48th edition of the 24hours of Daytona will remain as the “most lead changes” race in history. The next race will take place at the Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 6th.
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