Grand-Am

4 car diary - The cheese becomes more binding

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Hour 23 By Bill King As Elliott Forbes-Robinson was completing his first stint in The Boss Snowplow No. 4 Howard-Boss Motorsports Pontiac Crawford, the crystal clear outcome of Rolex 24 at Daytona clouded ...

Edited: Feb 8, 2005, 4:51 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Hour 23
By Bill King

As Elliott Forbes-Robinson was completing his first stint in The Boss Snowplow No. 4 Howard-Boss Motorsports Pontiac Crawford, the crystal clear outcome of Rolex 24 at Daytona clouded over. The contending No. 20 Howard- Boss Pontiac Crawford blew the transmission cooler, which took 20min to fix - long enough for the No. 77 Lexus Doran and the No. 4 to move up to second and third.

Then the No. 77 lost a cylinder and began to overheat, reducing its pace to the 1:57-2:00 range.

EFR pitted on leader Lap 649 and turned the car over to Jimmie Johnson to finish the race. The stop was a quick 47.614sec effort, and Johnson started cracking off 1:50s, rapidly reeling in the stuttering 77 car.

Just before the restart, Johnson dove the No. 4 in for a splash that will hopefully get Johnson to the checkered flag. On the restart at 11:15 a.m. EST, Johnson switched to Map 2 to conserve fuel. The extra stop put the 77 car back into second place some 20sec ahead of the 4 car; but Kevin Doran's efforts to cure the 77's electrical ills were not entirely successful and on leader Lap 683 - 49min from the finish - Johnson took second, a dozen laps behind the race leading No. 10 Pontiac Riley.

As the field settled in, Johnson led the 20 car by 12sec - both team cars running similar times and pulling away from the 77.

The end game is on.

Editor's note:
Please view all the diary entries by Bill King on the No. 4 Howard-Boss Motorsports Pontiac Crawford at http://www.motorsport.com/news/series.asp?S=GRANDAM

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article 4 car diary - Leitzinger completes his Rolex 24

Next article 4 car diary - Rolex 24, Bringing it home

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Official race results: 2026 NASCAR Cup Phoenix II

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

8 min

Official race results: 2026 NASCAR Cup Phoenix II

Tyler Reddick wins Phoenix NASCAR Cup thriller as Kyle Larson crashes

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

14 min

Tyler Reddick wins Phoenix NASCAR Cup thriller as Kyle Larson crashes

WEC Barcelona: Toyota scores dominant 1-2 to seal manufacturers’ title

WEC

WEC WEC

Barcelona

6 h

WEC Barcelona: Toyota scores dominant 1-2 to seal manufacturers’ title

Hailie Deegan eying NASCAR Truck return but future plans remain uncertain

NASCAR Truck

NSTR NASCAR Truck

Phoenix

6 h

Hailie Deegan eying NASCAR Truck return but future plans remain uncertain

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts