Rolex 24 at Daytona

[FormerFF]

Two weeks until the 24 hour race at Daytona, the racing season is upon us. I will have to say that the entry list is disappointing, both in number of cars entered and in star power. There are only two big name NASCAR drivers in JP Montoya and Jimmie Johnson, only 14 DPs entered, and only 42 total cars, both down from last year and down nearly a third from 2008. I'll still be watching when I can, it's still a special race to me, although I don't follow the rest of the
Grand Am season.

[anthonyvop]

Two weeks until the 24 hour race at Daytona, the racing season is upon us. I will have to say that the entry list is disappointing, both in number of cars entered and in star power. There are only two big name NASCAR drivers in JP Montoya and Jimmie Johnson, only 14 DPs entered, and only 42 total cars, both down from last year and down nearly a third from 2008. I'll still be watching when I can, it's still a special race to me, although I don't follow the rest of the
Grand Am season.

This will be a transitional year for both Grand-Am and ALMS with low car counts.
I believe in 2010 we will see Grand-Am moving to a more GT based series and the ALMS growing in the privateer prototype ranks especially with the new Formula LM class.

[BobbyC]

Here are some drivers on the book. Only notable drivers are listed.

01 - Justin Wilson
02 - Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Jamie McMurray, Juan Pablo Montoya (the "Chip Ganassi All-Star Racing Team")
6 - AJ Allmendinger
75 - Colin Braun
90 - Paul Menard, Buddy Rice
99 - Jimmie Johnson, Jimmy Vasser

GT
07 - Scott Russell
71 - Bobby Labonte
94 - Boris Said

There aren't enough fingers for the championship rings of those drivers combined.

[FormerFF]

There's definitely some talent in the field, it's just that it's a bit of a letdown from the lineups from a few years ago. I'm very impressed with some of the drivers in the GT field:

Timo Bernhard
Romain Dumas
Jorg Bergmeister
Patrick Long
Johannes van Overbeek
Wolf Henzler
Kelly Collins

Plus there are the usual Grand Am frontrunners. Unfortunately, the casual racing fan won't know any of these, and I suppose that's the reason that Fox won't be showing the first hour this year.

[Danske]

Still no love for Davy Jones?

[FormerFF]

Still no love for Davy Jones?

When was the last time he was in a car?

[Danske]

When was the last time he was in a car?

He was racing some in a Subaru in Koni Challenge in the past couple of years. Last year he was briefly attached to the Beyer DP as a driver/coach, but didn't race in it.

[Mark in Oshawa]

A lot of DP teams have discovered the economy sucks. I know AIM probably isn't back, and they won a race or two along the way.

Get used to it people...we have to suffer for a few more years before things start growing. The first few years of the DP's were small 10 or 11 car fields....so we are back to that again. 24 hour races are expensive to run....

[Danske]

AIM did issue a press release earlier this month (for what press releases are worth) that they are planning to run the series starting with Homestead.

[F1boat]

Wheldon is not in the race? Pity.