Grand-Am Mexico City: Marc Goossens, Jim Matthews end Ganassi's streak - AutoWeek Magazine
The Riley-Lexus of Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas, shown, held the pole for the Grand-Am race in Mexico City, but Marc Goossens drove his Riley-Mathews to the win.
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By TRAVIS BRAUN

Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas came to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez with an untarnished record. The duo won the Rolex 24 at Daytona and Grand-Am's second round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but their streak for team-owner Chip Ganassi ended in Mexico.

Just before the three-quarters mark in the Daytona Prototype race, Marc Goossens stole the lead from Pruett's Riley-Lexus on the outside of turn one. Goossens braved Pruett's pressure and Mexico's heat for the next 28 laps to give Riley-Matthews Motorsports its second ever win.

"It was tough," Goossens said. "Once I got by Pruett, he kept putting pressure on me all the way, and it was tough to keep the lead."

Pruett never eased up, finishing less than a tenth of a second behind Goossens' Riley-Pontiac. Pruett and Rojas still hold a 16-point lead over Goossens and his co-driver Jim Matthews in the championship.

"That was a great show," Pruett said. "That is what Grand-Am racing is about. It was good; it was hard. I'm happy for the [Riley-Matthews] guys."

But last year's champions, Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing, weren't so happy with the Ganassi team. After the team made an experimental call to stop on lap one-–therefore fulfilling a pit stop required by the series early in the race-–driver Jon Fogarty drove the Riley-Pontiac back to the bumper of pole-sitter Rojas.

Fogarty dove under the Mexican in the famous Peralta turn on lap 34, and the two drivers went side-by-side down the front straightaway. They touched doors at least six times before Rojas finally relinquished the spot.

"That's not what I expected out of Rojas," Fogarty said of the contact. "But I guess in his home country in front of all his fans he gets pretty desperate. So I'll forgive him this time, but I'm going to punch his teeth out next time."

Pit strategy and lapped traffic relegated Fogarty and Gurney to a fourth-place finish, but the contact with Rojas left the team sour. Rojas said he was simply protecting the inside line.

The win for Riley-Matthews Motorsports wasn't the only upset of the race. Krohn Racing's new Lola-Pontiac of Nic Jonsson and Ricardo Zonta finished third, just under a second behind the lead duo. This was just the second start for the Lola Daytona Prototype, a car that didn't compete in the Rolex 24 due to speed issues.

SunTrust Racing's streak of bad luck followed the team to Mexico as its Dallara-Pontiac, also in its second showing, crashed for the second time in a row. Matt Plumb in the Rum Bum Racing Riley-BMW made contact with SunTrust's Max Angelelli in the Peralta turn, spinning both cars.

The Peralta turn also ended the race for one of the Grand Touring-class favorites, the SpeedSource Mazda RX-8 of Nick Ham and Sylvain Tremblay that won the Rolex 24. Ham tangled with lapped traffic on lap 39, skidding backwards into the Peralta wall.

With Mazda's lead car out of the race, the door opened for Robin Liddell and Andrew Davis to give Stevenson Motorsports its first ever win, and the Pontiac GXP.R its second in a row. Liddell worked his way into the lead on pit strategy, and held off the factory GXP.R of Paul Edwards and Kelly Collins for under a three second margin of victory.

"It's very special," Liddell said of the team's first win. "We were a bit slower than [Edwards and Collins] in the middle part because we went on scuff tires, but we called it very fine on the fuel."

Collins and Edwards take the championship lead away from TRG's Spencer Pumpelly and Tim George, whose Porsche dropped out of the race with wheel-hub issues.