Five-time Grand Am Rolex championship winning team Telmex Ganassi is coming to the 2012 Rolex 24 at Daytona with two teams of U.S. Racing’s biggest names, looking to secure a second straight 1–2 win in the 50th-anniversary running of the series’ most famous race.
Telmex Ganassi already has four Rolex 24 wins to its credit, including three straight from 2006–2008. A win in the race’s 50th anniversary edition, following last year’s sweep, would create lifetime memories for all involved, and would also start off the 2012 season on the highest possible note.
“We have been fortunate to have experienced a lot of success in the Grand-Am series over the last eight years,” said team owner Chip Ganassi on the team’s website. “That success stems from a number of factors—like having great drivers behind the wheel, taking great equipment to the track, having great people in the shop and finding great partners. I am pleased to say that once again we will have all of that.”
For 2012, the team is bringing back five-time champ Scott Pruett and his regular co-driver, three-time champ Memo Rojas, in the No. 01 Telmex Ganassi Riley BMW along with 2011-winning co-drivers Joey Hand and Graham Rahal.
Though young, both Hand and Rahal have impressive racing pedigrees—Hand as a GT driver in Grand Am and the American Le Mans Series (where he shared the 2011 drivers championship with his co-driver Dirk Mueller) and Rahal in IndyCar.
This quartet of drivers won the Rolex in 2011 and have to be considered the favorites in 2012.
Telmex Ganassi is fielding a second Riley BMW also piloted by some of the fastest and best-known drivers in the nation.
The No. 02 car features IndyCar champions Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti (together they have won six of the last nine IndyCar titles) plus NASCAR and IndyCar driver Juan Pablo Montoya (one Indy 500 win, one IndyCar championship, two Rolex 24 wins) and NASCAR Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 winner Jamie McMurray.
This lineup finished second in 2011, finishing just 2.4 seconds behind the 01 car—an incredibly close finish after 24 hours of racing. The 02 car has about the same chance of winning as the 01.
The 2011 contest was close: three cars finished within four seconds of the winning 01 Telmex Ganassi car. Given that every team will be running a brand-new third-generation chassis—not one with which they have several years’ experience—2012’s race could be even closer, a runaway, or could be won by a dark horse, as when Action Express beat Telmex Ganassi by almost a minute in 2010, in Action Express’s debut race.
No one can predict the outcome, but Telmex Ganassi has done everything possible to ensure another dominant performance at the Rolex 24.
