There was no reason not to believe all the feel-good energy and karma of a 2007 season that ended so perfectly for the driving tandem of Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney would ooze into the 2008 Grand Am Rolex Series schedule.
Last year’s seven overall victories to go with 10 podiums and the Daytona Prototype championship were more than impressive. They seemed like a harbinger of things to come for the No. 99 Gainsco Pontiac-Riley team.
Instead, 2008 has seemed like the beginning of an old vaudeville joke — “A funny thing happened on the way to The Forum…”

Perhaps incensed by the dominant fashion in which Fogarty and Gurney rallied to win last year’s title, Grand Am’s Daytona Prototype division got healthier over the offseason.

Perhaps incensed by the dominant fashion in which Fogarty and Gurney rallied to win last year’s title, Grand Am’s Daytona Prototype division got healthier over the offseason.
I guess the joke would be on them, but Fogarty and Gurney aren’t laughing, particularly after a 14th-place finish among 19 DP entries Sunday at Virginia Int’l Raceway, where the duo hoped to take an earnest stand in defense of its title.
“We were just looking through the yearbook at last year, and that’s going to be hard to top,” said Gurney. “But we want to get back to that stage. It’s going to be hard to get there because there’s more competition this year, and there are more good drivers.”
Namely, Chip Ganassi with Felix Sabates, which has become the dominant team behind drivers Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas. The Ganassi Lexus-Riley has won three of four events, including Sunday at VIR and the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Even Bob Stallings Racing teammates Marc Goossens and Jim Matthews, who won at Mexico City, have passed Gurney/Fogarty in the standings. The defending champions’ best finish was second at Daytona.
While perplexed if not discouraged by their slow start, Gurney and Fogarty agreed that the increased competition is good for the Grand Am Rolex Series, which continues to try and win over fans to road racing in an oval land.
“If you look at other series, you see that it’s pretty hard to get a lot of cars that are capable of winning, and that’s one of the things that’s great about our series,” said Gurney. “It makes it fun for the drivers and for the teams. They can show up and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a good chance of winning this week.’ Nobody really knows who’s going to win.
“It’s good for the fans. It’s good for everybody.”
Fogarty said parity has been created by new rules and new Pirelli tires as well as the motivation of other teams to overtake the Gainsco team on the track and in the standings.
“There’s been some changes in the rulebooks that have helped other teams,” Fogarty said. “Some teams have stepped up and put together some really good driver pairings. I think we’ve struggled a little bit with the Pirellis, more than the other teams…Our struggle has been with the brakes, so we’ve been working on that adjustment.”
Gurney and Fogarty said they still have the friendship and chemistry necessary to defend their title — it’s just a question of translating that to the track once again.
“We came back from a deficit last year, but we know we can’t be content with where we are forever,” Fogarty said. “It’s time to get the ball rolling, I think.”
That will be a tougher chore than last year for Fogarty and Gurney, but even they say that’s a good thing.
It says that Grand Am is getting extremely competitive with Ganassi joining Stallings at the top along with other teams striving for the podium. Yes, competition is a good thing.
And it’s no joke anymore.