Grand-Am
VIRginia Int'l Raceway post-race summary
Perfect Weather and Great Racing at VIR400 Weekend DANVILLE, VA. -- VIRginia International Raceway hosted the Grand-American Rolex Sports Car Series Sunday under nearly perfect conditions for racing. Max Angelelli, partnered with Wayne Taylor and ...
Edited: May 2, 2007, 12:08 AM
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Perfect Weather and Great Racing at VIR400 Weekend
DANVILLE, VA. -- VIRginia International Raceway hosted the Grand-American Rolex Sports Car Series Sunday under nearly perfect conditions for racing. Max Angelelli, partnered with Wayne Taylor and Jan Magnussen in their No. 10 Daytona Prototype SunTrust Pontiac Riley, headed pole-winner Colin Braun to the checker by just over three and a half seconds.
Braun, at only eighteen years old, set the pole time on the 3.27-mile road course in his No. 76 Pontiac Riley at a new record of 1:45.003, a scant 0.150 second ahead of the similar No. 99 Gainsco racer. The runner-up spot was the team's second in three races, after a similar result in Mexico City last month. Braun is partnered in the car by Max Papis.
The win gave Angelelli and Magnussen the point lead in Daytona Prototype racing, with 127 points over second place Scott Pruett after four races in the fourteen race season. "It's a fantastic feeling," said Angelelli after the race. "We've been always good at this track, but this year is different, with so many different people involved." The team's weekend was not perfect, said the winning driver: "up until this morning, we had a terrible car, and luckily we turned everything around and had a good race."
The weekend's emotional high spot came when David Donohue and Darren Law drove their No. 58 Red Bull/Brumos Porsche Riley to third place. Team founder Bob Snodgrass passed away Tuesday evening and the team still managed to bring both cars to the track, in spite of heavy hearts.
"It's been a tough weekend for everybody," Law said. "We're really proud of the team. They've done a great job. We were up late last night working on the car. I've already said that it's great to have a podium, but it's even more special this weekend because of what's happened to Bob. There were a lot of happy people today."
The entire field of cars carried stickers commemorating Snodgrass in the race and the two Brumos Porsche cars led the first parade lap in his honor. Snodgrass was a force behind the scenes in sports car racing for many years and his cars won many races during the years, starting with production cars and progressing into the ranks of exotic prototypes. The track also had Virginia Tech flags spotted around the property and VT stickers were displayed on all the race cars, in memory of the tragedy at the Blacksburg, Va. campus.
In other race action over the weekend, the rider team of Nate Kern and Brian Parriott led nearly the entire VIR500 race for SunTrust MOTO-ST sport twin motorcycles, riding their San Jose BMW R1200 to finish ahead of Ty Howard and Troy Green on their Aprilia Tuono 1000R. Third in the 500-kilometer race went to Mike Himmelsbach and Matt McBride.
Saturday's feature race for Grand-Am Rolex GT cars was won by the Porsche GT3-C driven by Bryce Miller and Dirk Werner, over the Mazda RX-8 piloted by Sylvain Tremblay and Nick Ham. A Pontiac GXP-R driven by Kelly Collins and Paul Edwards finished third in the race for GT cars.
-credit: vir
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