The Rolex 24 hours kicks off the American racing season at Daytona at the end of January, two weeks before the 500. Chip Ganassi\u2019s Grand-Am operation has been the team to beat in recent years, winning the race in 2007 and \u201908 and finishing a close second in \u201909. Ganassi\u2019s Lexus-powered Rileys have been rebranded with Toyota engines for this coming season. Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas, the 2008 Grand-Am champions, will head the driving team, aided at Daytona by the likes of Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon. <\/p>\n
Among those hoping to beat Ganassi are defending Grand-Am champions Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty aboard Bob Stallings\u2019 Gainsco Riley-Pontiac. Gurney and Fogarty also won the championship in 2007, but they have yet to seriously challenge for victory at the season-opening Rolex 24. With Jimmie Johnson and Jimmy Vasser once again joining them at Daytona, they hope to do so this year.<\/p>\n
Other contenders include 2009 Rolex 24 winner Brumos Racing, with a pair of Porsche-powered Rileys led by David Donohue, and Wayne Taylor\u2019s Dallara-Ford with Max Angelelli leading the driving team. Roger Penske\u2019s team will not run in Grand-Am this year, moving its Verizon sponsorship to Will Power\u2019s third Indycar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":740,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[37095,167,37974,35787,37094,226,180,36216,36881,37093,34580,35767,36554,225,34159,35775,35774,228,834,35782,37097],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121601],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/26669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/740"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/26669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251254,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/26669\/revisions\/251254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26669"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=26669"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=26669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}