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Montreal & Watkins Glen Races Next On August Schedule

Jacksonville FL – Rounds eleven and twelve of the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series are coming up and are scheduled to fall just one week apart on the August calendar this year. On Friday afternoon, the week begins at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec. This 2.71 mile, 15 turn course is seeing its Rolex Series debut with this weekend’s races, which will host a combined GT and DP Grand-Am field for the 400k, 2.5 hour event.
In addition, the track is hosting the NASCAR Busch series for a weekend race, another first at the venue. (The event will mark the second time in 2007 the series have shared a track for a race weekend, following the Mexico City race which also featured both series.)
Located on the Ile de Notre Dame, a man-made island in the St. Lawrence River, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has hosted Formula One races and has been the home of the Canadian Grand Prix since 1978. The competition will mark the second race on a new track for the Brumos team this year, as last month’s Iowa Speedway race was also a debut for Grand-Am competition.

While the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is new to the team, racing in Montreal is not. This year’s event marks a return to Canada after a one year absence, but the team participated in events at Circuit Mont-Treblant in Quebec most recently from 2002 to 2005. In fact, Canada holds one rather unhappy memory for Brumos’ Hurley Haywood. Three decades ago, a Brumos championship which had been won there was later lost. Back in 1977, Brumos’ Porsche 934 won the Six Hours at Mosport by three laps, but four months after the checkered flag, the #59 Porsche was legislated out of first place and the Trans-Am Championship. The Porsche factory even printed a run of theirtraditional championship posters with Brumos’ Mosport winner in full white-red and blue. Today those posters remain a rare and expensive collector’s item.

That Mosport race was also a significant event in the meteoric rise of the man for whom the Montreal circuit is now named. In 1977, Gilles Villeneuve was the rising star of Canadian motorsport and by then a two-time North American Formula Atlantic Champion. Hurley Haywood was also a two-time road racing champion and a newly minted sports car superstar.
Just 19 months older than the Canadian, Haywood was already a sports car legend with three Rolex 24 wins and a fresh Le Mans victory on his already solid Porsche-powered resume. Haywood was entered to compete in the Mosport Six Hours and was on the entry list for the #0 Vasek Polak Porsche 934, but he didn’t drive that day. Villeneuve was in a BMW that day, finishing third to Brumos’ 934. That ultimately became a second overall win and a first in FIA Group 5, and was Villeneuve’s sole sports car victory.

In 2003, on the first visit to Canada by Daytona Prototypes, Brumos Racing came away with their first one-two finish of the season and the first one-two finish for a team of Daytona Prototypes in Grand-Am history. Unfortunately, it’s also the last time the Porsche-powered Prototypes from Jacksonville visited victory lane with a first place finish.

This week, Montreal is virgin territory for the entire Rolex Sports Car Championship and
Brumos would like to make a little more history in Quebec. When the 36 Rolex sports cars take the green flag at 4:15 PM this Friday, both of the Brumos Racing Porsche-Riley Daytona Prototypes will be in the field. The #58 entry, driven by David Donohue and Darren Law, along with the #59 car of Hurley Haywood and JC France, will contest the race on the circuit named for the famous Canadian superstar who won his class at Mosport three decades ago.

The race will also provide another opportunity for #58 Brumos/Red Bull driver Darren Law to add points in his quest for the 2007 Porsche Cup. After the Barber Motorsports Park race in late July, Law’s total points were 4480, just 350 points behind the current first-place points leader, Johannes Van Overbeek. Law has competed in Porsches whenever possible this year, racing in the Grand Am GT class as well as with his Brumos DP team in hopes of taking home the prestigious Porsche Cup award for 2007.

The race will be broadcast tape delayed in America on Speed TV at 8:00 PM ET on Friday, August 3rd. Then, in one week (August 10th) it’s back to Watkins Glen for the shortest race of the 2007 Rolex Championship season, held on The Glen’s 2.454 mile short couurse

Article posted on: 07-Aug-02