Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan is hoping for his second victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for 2013. Kanaan along with teammate Joey Hand will be driving a BMW-Riley Daytona Prototype class car for Chip Ganassi Racing. It is, in fact, the team’s number two car. Former Indy car driver Scott Pruitt and Memo Rojas will be in the number one BMW-Riley for Ganassi. 2012 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year Rubens Barrichello is entered in a Dallera-Ford DP car for Doran Racing. Barrichello won the 2002 United States Formula One Grand Prix at IMS so he knows the circuit. This is a sort of last minute deal for the Brazilian driver. He was unable to secure a ride for the 500 last May due to lack of a sponsor. He has been running in the Brazilian Stock Car Series this year. Rolex, which promotes the Grand Am series, would like to see Barrichello become a regular competitor in the series. Indy 500 drivers A.J. Allmending, Max Papis and former Indy 500 winners Scott Dixon and Juan Pablo Montoya will be competing in DP class cars. Alex Gurney, who is the son of my hero Dan Gurney, will be a co-driver in a Chevrolet-Riley DP car. Indy 500 driver and defending Brickyard Grand Prix champion Sebastien Bourdais is entered in Ford-Riley DP.
Actor Patrick Dempsey has his own Grand Am racing team and was entered in last year’s race. He isn’t entered in the 2013 event, however.
The Indianapolis Brickyard Grand Prix is really two endurance races. The Rolex series race is a 3 hour endurance race and is the eighth race in a twelve race schedule in the Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series and is for Daytona Prototype and Grand Touring Class race cars. The event is part of the North American Endurance Championship and is actually sanctioned by NASCAR. The second race is the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge which is a two and half hour endurance race for modified sports cars. The races will be run for the Motor Speedway’s road course circuit which uses the first and second turns and most of the main straightaway but cuts through the middle of the track and emerges at the exit of the second turn. The track length is 2.534 miles and there are thirteen turns in a lap The cars drive the track clockwise rather then the usual counterclockwise. That means the cars will drive northward on the main stretch and generally drive in an east to south direction. Over 100 cars competed in last year’s events. Sebastien Bourdais and his teammate Alex Popow drove their Ford-Riley DP through a thunderstorm and completed 91 laps in three hours to win the inaugural event The winner of GT class was Andy Lally and co-driver/car owner John Potter who drove a Porsche GT3 Cup car.
The whole package is part of the Brickyard 400 NASCAR race on the weekend. Everybody will arrive on Wednesday the 24th. However, none of the teams will be able to unload their cars and equipment until Thursday the 25th. There will be both Brickyard 400 and Brickyard Grand Prix events throughout the five days from the 24th to the 28th. On Thursday the 25th the practice and qualifying sessions for both the Rolex and Continental Tire races will be held in four segments for the different classes of cars. On Friday the 26th the track will belong exclusively to the sports cars. The garage Area will open at 6:30 a.m. At 8:30 a practice session will commence. There will be an autograph and fan walk starting at 11:35. The pre-race ceremony for the Continental Tire Challenge Race will begin at 1:50 p.m. and the green flag for the CTSCC will drop at 2 p.m. The winning cars will take the checkered flag at 4:30 p.m.
The Rolex Series pre-race festivities will start at 5:10 p.m. and the green flag will be waved for the start of the race at 5:30 and the checkered flag will be waved at 8:30 p.m. There are no set amount of laps that must be completed in these two races. Whoever is ahead at the end of the 3 hours in their class is the winner of the race, or 2.5 hours in the case of the CTSCC event.
I really haven’t said anything about the Brickyard 400 simply because its pretty well covered. I just have not heard nearly as much about the Grand Am race, however. A rumor that I have heard is that one of the reasons that the Speedway is adding lighting to the course is that there are plans to extend the Rolex race into the evening hours, thus making it a five or six hour endurance event lasting until 11:30 or midnight. That would really be something now, wouldn’t it boys and girls! Until then good Luck and Good Racing!
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