Ganassi wins the NAEC with a second place finish
Ryan Dalziel and Alex Popow drove the Starworks Riley-BMW to victory in the three-hour Brickyard Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, while Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett finished second in the Ganassi Riley-BMW. Ganassi’s second-place finish was enough to secure a win for the team in the three-race North American Endurance Championship. The NAEC title is based on finishes in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of Watkins Glen, and the Indianapolis race.
Both the first and second place cars ran the new Dinan-built S65 V8. It was the Ganassi team’s first race with the new engine, and was Starworks’ first race in a BMW-powered prototype since 2010. The team ran Ford Power in the 2011 and 2012 seasons and the first seven races in 2013. Starworks won the Rolex Series race at Indy last year, with Popow and Sebastien Bourdais on board.
Dalziel said “I wasn’t sure if I should have kissed the bricks or kissed the guys on the crew first. We got our new BMW engine only a week ago. We felt we had a pretty special car this year. We were missing just that little bit, and now we have it with the engine.”
Both Ganassi cars had problems with about an hour left in the race. Pruett spun, dropping back in the pack, and Joey Hand had to serve a stop-and-go plus 60 second penalty for avoidable contact with the #5 Action Express prototype.
Starworks’ second Riley-BMW, with Brendon Hartley, Pierre Kaffer, and Scott Mayer sharing the drive, finished fourth, while Hand and Tony Kanaan finished ninth in the second Ganassi prototype. The Sahlen Riley-BMWs finished twelfth and thirteenth in the Daytona Prototype class.
Turner Motorsport’s M3s finished twelfth and thirteenth in the GT class. Max Papis and Jeff Segal won the class in their R. Ferri/AIM Motorsport Ferrari. John Edwards and Robin Liddell finished second in their Stevenson Motorsports Camaro. Stevenson won the GT class NAEC title.
The Rolex Series runs again at Road America in two weeks.—Brian S. Morgan
