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 DAYTONA
BEACH, FL (February 4, 2005) -- In the 2005 Grand-Am Cup Series
season-opening Grand-Am Cup 200, co-drivers Ian James and Tom Nastasi drove the
No. 5 Blackforest Motorsports Ford Mustang GT to victory at Daytona
International Speedway. It was the debut race for the 2005 Ford Mustang GT, and
was the first Grand-Am Cup Series overall victory for a Mustang of any
generation.
James started third on
the grid and led five laps during his stint before handing the car over to
Nastasi for the second half of the race. The team elected to forego changing
tires on its final pit stop, which proved to make the difference in the race.
Nastasi claimed the lead for the final time on Lap 44 and led the final 14
circuits en route to his first career Grand-Am Cup Series victory.
"I got the car
second and they decided not to change tires," Nastasi said. "As a
driver, you're never happy about that. We went out and it was hard but the car
was really phenomenal. I ran out of gas right after the start/finish line. One
more lap and that would have been it. We got the car two days ago and we had no
time with it. Multimatic Motorsports prepped it for us - they thought the race
was one more lap."
Daniel Colembie and David
Tuaty took the victory in the Sport Touring (ST) class co-driving the No. 12 TC
Kline Racing BMW Z4. However, the team and drivers were stripped of all points
and prize money following technical inspection as the car's fuel tank exceeded
the maximum size allowed.
Eric Curran and Bob
Endicott came home second in ST co-driving the No. 27 Bill Fenton Motorsports
Acura RSX-S, followed by Tim Pappas and Steve Pfeffer in the No. 97 Turner
Motorsport BMW 330i. David Haskell and Sylvain Tremblay finished fourth in the
No. 70 SpeedSource Mazda RX-8, and Don Salama, Will Turner and Matt Connolly
came home fifth in the ST class driving the No. 22 CSL Racing BMW 330ci.
Hoosier Racing Tires
engineer, Mark Brown commented that he was quite pleased with the performance
of the tires. "The high banks of Daytona are quite demanding. The tires we
designed for this series must perform on many different types of surfaces and
on many different track configurations. Being able to complete this entire
event on one set of tires not only allowed the team to have a race winning
strategy but also to do it in a cost effective manner.
Mark also pointed out
that the fastest race lap occurred on the 45th lap out of 57 total laps. In
addition, ten cars ran their fastest lap after lap 40.
The Grand-Am Cup 200 will
be televised on a tape-delayed basis on Saturday, March 5 at 11:00 a.m. on
SPEED Channel. Next up is a stand-alone GS event, which will also be the
series' first-ever visit to Latin America, as the GS cars head to Santo Domingo
in the Dominican Republic.
Story derived from www.grandamerican.com.
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