Grand Am at VIR
The France-family-of-NASCAR-famed-owned sports-car series is going to be up the road this weekend. Me? I'm going to be rebuilding the picnic table in the backyard that finally dryrotted and trying to figure out how much of the Sunday afternoon 'Dega race I can watch at a cookout without being labeled a jerk by my hosts. ("But it's work" doesn't cut it usually.)
That's not to say I'm not interested in Grand Am. I am, kinda sorta, in the way that if it's on TV (and the DP class is live Sunday), I'll watch it, mostly to see who Boris Said will run into. And Grand Am is pretty -- not as pretty as F1, but there's some actual honest-to-gosh racing and even some passing. The Daytona race was cool. Seeing it live at VIR probably would be worth the trip to Alton, Va. (You can Google-map it yourself. It's rumored to be near Danville.)
Today's pitch from the Grand-Am PR folks is driver Colin Braun. He's a name NASCAR fans probably need to watch for. He's 18, a native of Texas and already has two DP-class wins under his belt. (He went back to back last year at Daytona and at Barber.). Better, he helped co-driver Jorg Bergmeister win last year's DP title.He won the Mexico pole this season and finished second, and he's fourth in the standings after three races. (He also races in the other U.S. sports car series that we're not allowed to talk about until Grand Am leaves town.)
Earlier today Braun had a couple of meetings in Charlotte with some race teams, so let's go ahead and start speculating as to when he'll end up in a NASCAR ride. David Smith has Braun ranked seventh on his famed Blackboard, and Braun says on his own Web site he wants a Busch or ARCA ride this year. The Busch Series has two more road races this season - early August in Montreal and the Glen. ARCA has ... oh, who cares what ARCA's doing. Take the Busch ride, kid.
More for the curious:
Grand Am
Colin Braun
Virginia International Raceway
Randy Ruhlman, a Greensboro guy in the Grand Am series