For sports car racing enthusiasts, nothing beats the 24 hours of LeMans, but seeing Grand Am live the weekend after was a good “hair o’ the dog” if you please. This weekend had a little of everything—Grand Am prototypes and GT cars, the Koni Challenge ST cars, Formula BMW and, to round out the event, the Mustang Challenge.

The Grand Am represents the half of the old IMSA in which “garagistas” could buy a customer chassis, drop in a race-prepared stock engine, and go racing. The effort to contain cost is working, as a very robust field of over 40 cars in a combined prototype and GT field took the green flag. The Grand Am prototype formula has netted about a half-dozen different engine makes in three varieties of chassis. Porsche powers three cars on two teams (Brumos and Ruby Tuesday) and has a healthy number of entries in the GT class.

When the DP and GT classes were on the track together, the blend of exhaust notes made for an interesting “cocktail” of sound—high-pitched, almost jet-like Mazda; the throaty, lilting M V-8’s; the snarl-ing Fords, and the buzzing Porsches. I found the best listening spot was in Thunder valley, near the cross-over bridge. At that spot, most of the cars have hit top RPM coming down the hill and the trannies are banging into the next gear as the cars travel uphill towards the Carrousel turn. If a pack of cars approached the entry to Thunder Valley, it sounded almost like an approaching train as the blast of air echoed off of the concrete barrier.

That was also a good viewing spot. The entry in the Valley is a 90 right with an immediate drop-off. It was neat to watch as some cars got tail happy while others executed a well-coordinated four-point slide out to the gators. As each of the cars settled, they became consumed in a contest for position as they raced under the bridge and back up hill.

Grand Am’s tight costs containment has, for a num-ber of years, resulted in prototypes that are nearly identical in appearance. This year, however, there has been a bit of a shakeup in chassis providers—Lola being the most notable example—which has resulted in a bit of competition in nose profiles. As an aside, I asked one crew chief what kinds of modi-fications are allowed and which are prohibited. His answer seemed somewhat evasive, as he said that “you can do whatever Grand Am allows.”

The Lola (Krohn Racing) has a raised radiator profile somewhat like the profile of the Porsche 917-30 and 936. The Doran (Kodak) has an abbreviated profile leaving it very box-like. Finally, the Crawford-Porsche (Ruby Tuesday’s) has a box-like protrusion in the nose like the Doran, but it has an upper lip very similar to the nose inlet of the ALMS’ Porsche Spyders. That is a brilliant cross-marketing strategy!
Recently, it seems like the Pontiacs have been hold-ing court more often than not in the Grand Am, which you might expect given the series’ name. However, this weekend the Porsches seemed to have gotten in right, as the Brumos Team put their proto-type on pole. Pontiac answered with the GT pole. All looked set for a very competitive race on Saturday.

Mother Nature featured prominently in the main event, however, unleashing a tremendous downpour shortly after the green flag. This was a real wild card as first one car and then another fell victim to the extremely thin grip. The Grand Am website’s video had the best example of the impact of the rain, show-ing the cars going through turn 1. Cars came through the turn, seemingly okay but as they exited they con-tinued in a wide, gentle arc—controlled chaos in an uncontrolled situation! The rain eventually stopped and the Brumos put on a charge for all time, coming up just short as the race finished under caution, den-ying the decent-sized crowd what could have been an all-time classic sports car finish at this track. The race results were the flip of qualifying—Pontiac took top honors in DP and Porsche first took the checkers in GT.