Ganassi BMW Leads Porsche Early in Rolex 24 at Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The leaderboard at Daytona International Speedway looked very familiar in the early hours of this weekend's Rolex 24 at Daytona sports car season-opener.

While Fords dominated the qualifying session and led the 44-car field to the green flag, a couple of of former winning teams quickly found their way through the steady rain and puddled 3.56-mile road course to establish the early pace of the race.

Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, which won an unprecedented three consecutive Rolex 24s from 2006-2008, held the point at the six-hour mark.

Ganassi's No. 02 Target BMW Riley, co-driven by reigning IZOD IndyCar Series champ Dario Franchitti, 2008 IndyCar champ Scott Dixon, 2000 Indy 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya and NASCAR star Jamie McMurray, held a slim two-second lead over the defending race winning Brumos Porsche.

The No. 71 TRG Porsche co-driven by Spencer Pumpelly, Tim George. Jr., Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and 2000 NASCAR Cup champion Bobby Labonte led the GT class and was ranked 13th overall.

"I will say this is a better car than we had in 2008 when we won,'' Franchitti said. "The trick is to have a car that is competitive and to have luck, but there's still five cars out there I consider potential winners.

"We're not taking any chances right now.''

It was a similar strategy for defending Grand-Am Series season champion GAINSCO Chevrolet team. It started last among the 15 prototypes on the grid after missing qualifying. Instead the team was still repairing massive damage to the rear end of the car sustained when NASCAR champ Jimmie Johnson crashed in Thursday's practice.

Attrition and driving mistakes by some of the better-qualifying cars opened the door for the GAINSCO team, and lead driver Alex Gurney and Johnson had put the car in a respectable seventh place overall, 10-seconds off the lead pace at the six-hour mark.

"I can tell you I wasn't going to break the car on my watch, I did that once this weekend,'' said a smiling Johnson after his first night shift behind the wheel.

"I still felt like if Alex (Gurney) and Jon (Fogarty) needed to go faster, find that extra half second in a shootout at the end, they could. I just wasn't going to find that edge again.''

The GAINSCO car was one of only nine prototypes still on the lead lap.

The pole-winning No. 10 SunTrust Ford owned and driven by two-time Rolex winner Wayne Taylor was five laps down after suffering one setback after another. It blew a tire while leading the race early, lost two laps repairing an antenna and then went to the garage just after 9 p.m. for front-end repairs after Pedro Lamy hit the wall exiting the pits on cold tires shortly after 9 p.m..

The crew pulled an impressive 10-minute turnaround replacing the front splitter, brakes and suspension pieces.

"The guys have really done just a fantastic job,'' said Taylor, shaking his head, but managing a smile.

"There's nothing we can about panic about. There's still 18 hours to go.''