Driving Sports

"Racing is a game of inches," pro driver Cindi Lux once told me. Yet for being a game of inches, races are most often won by a wide margin. Even a sanctioning body like NASCAR that uses yellow flags to keep the racing close rarely sees a photo finish. And when you're talking about long-distance 24-hour endurance races, the tendency to win by a mile is amplified. So it's news that this past weekend's running of the Rolex 24 At Daytona was the closest finish in the 47-year history of the event. It was also believed to be the closest contested finish in the history of major international 24-hour endurance racing.

After 24 hours of racing on the road racing circuit at the famous speedway, David Donohue edged Juan Pablo Montoya to the checkered flag by just .167 seconds.

Donohue, who started on the pole position and drove the No. 58 Brumos Racing Porsche Riley with co-drivers Darren Law, 2004 Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy Rice and Spaniard Antonio Garcia, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the famous victory taken by his father, Mark Donohue, in the same event. The late Mark Donohue joined Chuck Parsons in winning the 1969 event at the wheel of a Penske Racing Chevrolet-powered Lola T70.

The former record for closest finish of the Rolex 24 was 30.926 seconds, set in 2000. After 24 hours of racing on Saturday and Sunday, four drivers finished within 11 seconds. Joao Barbosa finished third in the No. 59 Brumos Racing Porsche Riley, 5.504 seconds back, while Max Angelelli in the No. 10 SunTrust Racing Ford Dallara was fourth, a mere 10.589 seconds behind the leader.

By comparison, the closest contested finish of the 24 Hours of Le Mans was 120 meters - approximately one second - when Jacky Ickx in a John Wyer Ford GT40 held off the Porsche 908 of Hans Hermann in 1969. The finish of the 1966 classic was 20 yards, in the staged three-wide finish of a trio of GT40s in Ford's breakthrough triumph. The closest timed finish in the history of the French endurance race was in 2004, with 41 seconds separating the top two cars at the conclusion of the race.

With racing this close, fans can expect to see the Grand-Am brand gaining exposure and popularity. The series is owned by NASCAR, so there's some marketing savvy behind the Rolex name. Both Grand-Am series, including Rolex and the KONI Challenge series, feature production-based sports cars running on road racing circuits. Rolex adds the Daytona Prototype class, which is reminiscent of the machines that made Le Mans a byword of sports car racing.