AUTO RACING
Penske team grabs early Rolex lead
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Roger Penske’s new Porsche Riley Daytona Prototype was out front Saturday after the first three hours of the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway.
Timo Bernhard, a former overall winner of the 24-hour race, put the Penske entry, making its Grand-Am Rolex Series debut, out front on the second lap of the grueling event and, with teammate Romain Dumas, kept the car at or near the front in the early going.
Bernhard and Dumas, who have partnered to win the championship the past two years in the rival American Le Mans Series, are co-driving here with Ryan Briscoe, one of Penske’s IndyCar drivers.
“I had a great start,” 2003 Daytona winner Bernhard said after giving up the seat to Dumas. “We brought the car in a little early just to play it safe.”
The sometimes-messy race got off to a clean start and stayed under the green flag until the last few minutes of the third hour when a Mazda RX8 GT entry, entered by actor Patrick Dempsey and driven at the time by Jep Thornton, hit a tire barrier.
Meanwhile, the two Lexus Rileys of Chip Ganassi Racing, trying to give the team an unprecedented fourth straight 24- hour win, were keeping the leaders in sight.
Former IndyCar champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti was second, with NASCAR star Juan Pablo Montoya sixth in the other Ganassi car.
Franchitti is co-driving with fellow IndyCar star Scott Dixon and Indy Lights champion Alex Lloyd, while Montoya is paired with the sports car championship duo of Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas.
The two Ganassi cars struggled a bit in the daylight with grip on the warm track, but Dixon said he expected them to be stronger after dark.
“The way these cars are set up, we’re going to get more grip on a cooler track and the engines are going to be even stronger at night,” said the New Zealander, who won the Indy- Car title and the Indy 500 last year.
The Pontiac Riley prototype co-driven by three-time reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson stayed with the leaders until the end of the third hour, but began to lose ground because of a mysterious electrical problem.
The No. 86 Farnbacher Noles Racing Porsche, a team that included Williamsville’s Eric Lux, was 19th. The race ends today (3 p. m., Ch. 29).
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