Dalziel, second from left, won the Rolex 24 in January with the new Action Express Racing team before switching over the Starworks Motorsports to complete the final 11 rounds. (LAT)
Sorry it has been a while but I made a decision after the final race not to write anything about my 2010 Rolex season until I took some time off to ponder about what could have been.
Never in my career have I heard the phrase "It truly is David versus Goliath" as I heard this year (when commentators made the reference of our little ole’ Starworks team against the mighty Ganassi).
But 'what could have been' turned into 'what the hell happened?' for me and the crew of the #8 Corsa Car Care Starworks entry. And a potential 2nd and 5th in the final standings materialized into 5th and 10th for Mike Forest and I. Gutted is not even close to how we felt going into Utah.
Now let’s back up to Round 11 at Montreal. We headed there second in the standings, and with the 75lbs weight penalty lifted from our Riley/DINAN BMW chassis. Since adding the weight three races prior, we never seemed to break into the top-3, and as a result found ourselves not only lose touch with the No. 01 Ganassi car, but fell closer into the mad Italian claws of 'Max the Ass' (oops… did I say that again?) and the No. 10 Suntrust entry.
We were so motivated going into Montreal; in every practice session we were on fire. Whatever Corsa Car Care polish the guys waxed that baby with prior to Montreal did the trick because our car was fast.....really really fast. We ended up final practice fastest over all, and on old tires. We were so confident overnight that we could turn things around with two races to go. Don’t get me wrong, though; I love to think positive, but I am also a realist and I knew Ganassi had the title in the bag.
But for a new team with new people and a new co-driver we could do something never done before by finishing second in our first year. To Starworks, Mike and I that would have been a victory. Hell, even Penske couldn’t accomplish that… just to put the level of competition into perspective.
Both Mike and I knew we were in great shape, and along with our engineer Bill Riley (aka Big Bear) we decided to clean her, prep her and go win Montreal. It’s not often that things go this well, and like Mid-Ohio earlier in the season, it was one of those weekends where you were going to dominate the race or have total disaster.
We all know what was coming next......DISASTER.
On Lap 8, Mike was up in the top-6 and our strategy was perfect. Then we hear the call from him over the radio "We have a problem, we have no drive…we have no drive." My stomach literally turned upside down, my head went into my hands and to be honest if I had been in a private place I would have broke down in tears. It was all over. We knew that it had to be a big failure with how it broke, and with the GRAND-AM rules stating that a driver must complete 30 minutes to score points, we would be awarded no points, none whatsoever.
I didn’t realize how close I was to losing it until I watched the replay of the race on SPEED from my home in Orlando and saw that I was tearing up pretty bad. Even writing about it now gets me angry, frustrated and yet happy at the same time. I am happy because this time last year I had nothing to write about, and now I am angry because I finished in the top-5 of one of the most competitive championships in the world. I won the 24 Hours of Daytona and of the other 11 races, recorded seven top-5's and two podiums. I am not sad at all; just disappointed.
We were all pretty bummed after Montreal but we regrouped and for the first time in 2010 we didn’t give a crap about points, or even finishing going into Utah. We were going all out for a win. We went into Utah seventh in points and even with a victory, fourth would have been all we could accomplish.
But for the first time all season we really struggled for a good setup. Maybe we were all just a little off our game, or maybe it was just one of those weekends where we were going to finish fifth. We had one good session going into the race but when race day came around we struggled badly in the early part of the race. We actually found our tires to be very inconsistent and I blame that for some of our issues.
It seemed that each set over the weekend were just a little different and so you found yourself chasing tire balance and not car setup. After a few changes you get the car good, switch tires and boom, the car sucked. It was the same in the race.
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