AN EXCITING RACE DOMINATED BY FORD?

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It was a another race on another spring Sunday afternoon.

Weather was a factor. Aesthetically hideous “spec racers” (hatched from the dull minds of the “usual suspects” down in Daytona Beach) battled for the win. Crashes, spins, and full course yellows punctuated the racing day. The cars from Ganassi and Penske both figured out ways to lose. Pit strategy and track position were paramount.

And a Ford-Powered “spec racer” dominated.

Another NASCAR Sprint Cup race?

Sorry.

The common-template “Toyota Cup” “show” ran before a host of empty seats at Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday night (May 2, 2009). American motorsport’s most unpopular driver – Kyle “the DOOD” Busch – wheeling the stomach-turning, traitorous Joe Gibbs “Toyota Camry” took the top spot in the “Russ Friedman 400.”

Nobody cared.

Busch’s common-template “NASCAR-of-Tomorrow” didn’t feature its normal “M&Ms” livery. Instead, Tokyo Joe’s awful Toyota was slathered in “Combos” (tm) colors. “Combos” (tm) are apparently some sort of gut-bloating, ipecac-in-a-bag snack food that made “The DOOD” repeatedly pine for football season in the SPEED Channel post-race fandango.

According to Wikipedia, “Combos are produced by forming a soft bread-like dough, which is hollowed out into a tube-shaped form. A cutter slices the dough into bite-sized lengths. The snacks are then baked, cooled, and filled with the appropriate filling.”

Yum. Cookie cutter snacks for cookie cutter racing . . . .

The stomach-turning “Combos” body wrap on the horrible Gibbs Japanese traitor-mobile made it look as if it were built of some sort of Cheetos (tm) diamond-plate.

For the record, the Sprint Cup Fords had another dismal short track outing, placing only three hideous, common-template “Fusions” among the top twenty.

Jack Roush’s phalanx of Fusions did snag a little on-camera time through dual spins, hitting the wall, and a “short-term-gain-long-term-loss” pit strategy. Yet at money time, only one “Roush-Kat-Teer” – Jaime McMurray – was in the top ten. No Fords made the top five.

In other words, a typical 2009 short track race for Ford.

Matt Kenseth has now almost faded out of the season top-twelve. The days of his early-season success are a distant memory.

At least Cousin Carl Edwards kept the shiny-side up this week . . . .

The dominant Fords were in New Jersey on Sunday.

New Jersey?

Yep. In the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car series.

Formula One-ex Ricardo Zonta and Nic Jonsson dominated the Verizon Wireless 250 at New Jersey Motorsports Park in the Krohn Racing Ford Lola Daytona Prototype. Even better, second place was hauled down by Max Angelelli and Brian Frizzelle in the Suntrust Ford Dallara fielded by Wayne Taylor Racing.

To be sure, the stubby Daytona Prototypes are the ugliest race cars this side of an IMCA modified (and were seemingly penned by the same aesthetic geniuses who gave us the BOXCar-of-Tomorrow in NASCAR). However, the show they put on at Millville, New Jersey was first-rate entertainment for Ford Racing fans.

Racing in sometimes a torrential downpour, the Daytona Prototypes shared the track with more production-styled GT cars. The action began before the first turn, when one of the Ford-Powered Daytona Prototypes (the No. 60 Michael Shank Racing Ford Riley, aimed at the time by Mark Patterson) punted a Pontiac Daytona Prototype that just suddenly appeared in the spray.

That set the tone for a wet and wild two hours and forty-five minutes of road racing in New Jersey.

(NASCAR, of course, would have been wasting time in a boring “rain delay.”)

The lame duck Pontiacs, for their part in the race, seemed to be getting an early start on packing it in. Killed as a brand earlier in the week by General Motors, the racing Pontiacs were little more than rolling chicanes for the competitive wet-weather cars. Virtually all of the GT class Ponchos were hampered by foggy windows and other visibility problems (which the SPEED Channel announcers eventually attributed to steam rising off of the headers of the front-engined GXPs).

The rear-engined GT class Porsches did not suffer as much from a lack of defrost. The 911-style Porsches diced in the wet, with the win going to Leh Keen and Dirk Werner in a Farnbacher Loles Porsche.

While the Porsche-Powered Daytona Prototypes engaged in an entertaining intramural battle and the Toyota-Powered “Lexus” Prototypes spiced up the show with spins and mechanical lapses, the Fords used pit strategy and wet-weather handling to move to the front. Once Zonta put the Krohn Ford Lola into the lead, he started to “check out.” It was a brilliant drive which lead to the inaugural win for Zonta in Rolex Sports Car competition and for the Ford Lola combination in Daytona Prototype. A drying track and fuel mileage concerns created some drama as the time ran down (moreso further back in the pack). After the race, Zonta revealed that he did it all the old-fashioned way without any radio assistance

All in all, it was a great afternoon to be a Ford Racing fan in New Jersey.