AXR Cadillacs overcome overheating problems to finish 1-2 at Rolex 24

 

Action Express Racing delivered a record-breaking performance en route to a dominant 1-2 finish in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona on Sunday.

 

Joao Barbosa, Filipe Albuquerque and Christian Fittipaldi combined to claim the victory in the No. 5 Cadillac DPi-V.R, crossing the line a little more than a minute ahead of the No. 31 sister car driven by Eric Curran, Felipe Nasr, Mike Conway and Stuart Middleton. Along the way, the winning trio’s 808 laps of the 3.560-mile road course smashed the previous record of 762 (set in 1992), and the 2,876.48 miles covered toppled the 36-year-old mileage record by over 100 miles.

 

Barbosa, who’d previously won the race with Action Express in 2010, and then again alongside Fittipaldi in 2014, took the lead for the final time under caution following a pit stop by former IndyCar star Helio Castroneves, who was sharing one of the brand-new Acura Team Penske DPis with Ricky Taylor and Graham Rahal.

 

“I was looking all the time to the water temperature and oil temperature and it is flashing on and off at the same time, lighting up like a Christmas tree,” Albuquerque said. “It was really hard to manage.”

 

Similar problems plagued the No. 31 entry, which fell off the lead lap when it was forced to make a cooling-related stop of its own. But when it came to mechanical problems they had plenty of company, particularly among their DPi class competition. Attrition was high among the outright contenders, in part because of the intensity at which the race was run: there were just four caution periods during the 24 hours, denying cars and drivers alike the brief reprieves offered by a few laps under yellow flags.

 

The main threat to Action Express came from the Penske Acuras, although that danger was extinguished when Castroneves was forced to make a lengthy stop for repairs to the No.7 entry during the night after contact with Nasr. By that point Penske’s other car, shared by Dane Cameron, Juan Pablo Montoya and Simon Pagenaud, had already lost touch with the leaders after suffering an electrical problem.

 

Another pre-race favorite, the No.5 Konica Minolta Cadillac that won last year’s event, withdrew during the morning after suffering a spate of tire failures. The remaining DPis – two Cadillacs, two Nissans and two Mazdas – were all out of the race by daybreak on Sunday.

 

Their misfortunes left a void at the top of the timesheets that the LMP2 cars were all too happy to fill, and the No.54 CORE autosport car accordingly took the LMP2 class win and third overall, ahead of the United Autosports No.32 entry. Much of the pre-race interest had been on United’s other car, the No.23 that included two-time Formula 1 world champion Fernando Alonso among its line-up. But a strong early showing, particularly during an unexpected downpour during Saturday evening, eventually gave way to assorted brake problems, and the car was classified 38th, 90 laps down.

 

“(The problem) was a little bit of a surprise, and a little bit unlucky,” said the Spaniard. “We lost our opportunity here, but I have [had] a positive outcome even with all the issues, because I really did enjoy [the race] a lot.”

 

Elsewhere, Ryan Briscoe, Scott Dixon and Richard Westbrook claimed the GTLM class honors in the No.67 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT ahead of teammates Joey Hand, Dirk Mueller and Sebastien Bourdais in the sister No.66. The Ganassi Fords finished two laps ahead of their closest GTLM rival, but more significant from a team standpoint was that the result marked Ganassi’s 200th win across all forms of motorsport.

 

“It's been a great weekend,” Ganassi said. "For me, it was one of the most nerve-wracking wins. After a certain amount of hours go around the clock, it's your race to lose – and those are the worst races, because everything's out of my control."

 

Perhaps the best racing in the 50-car field was reserved for the GT Daytona class, where several teams swapped turns in the lead before the Grasser Racing Team secured the class victory with its Lamborghini Huracan GT3. Five-time Rolex 24 winner Scott Pruett, who’d announced his plans to retire following the race, ended his career with a 10th in the GTD class after his Lexus RC F GT3 sustained damage while one of his co-drivers was at the wheel.

 

"The plan was to try to get me in for the end, but with the damage, unfortunately that didn't happen,” Pruett said. “The No.1 priority was to get to the checkered flag. You'd like to get there first, but first you want to get there."

 

 

SOURCE: USA TODAY

 

AUTHOR:Mark Glendenning