QUOTE(URY914 @ Mar 7 2004, 05:40 PM)
So which cars did the banging?
And who won?
Jan Magnassun in the Lista Doran and Max Papis in the Ganassi Riley got into a pissing contest while going for first place. The result let Andy Wallace in the Boss Crawford take the win. Pretty close racing for the pseudo-sports prototype DSP's.
Grand Am has really castrated the GT classes to let the DSP's win. Last year, the first year of the DSP class, the GTS cars were actually faster than than the DSP's but Grand Am always lined up the DSP's first on the grid. After Racers Group won the 24 Hrs with a GT Porsche, Grand Am reduced the fuel capacities of the GTS and GT cars, which meant additional fuel stops, to keep them behind the DSP's. This year they combined the GTS and GT classes and by strangling and weighing them down finally made the DSP's faster!
I went to the season sprint finale at Daytona last year where a GTS Corvette led until forced to pit for fuel in the closing stage of the race. In the post race interview the driver commented that their fuel tank was "the size of a Pepsi can"! I thought it was funny, but apparently Grand Am had words with him for that bit of honesty.
Of course this year Grand Am red-flagged the 24 Hrs just to assure a DSP victory. At least that's what some people think...
Mike