Daytona Rolex 04/02/2001   Archangel’s Rolex The Dream Comes True   Archangel Motorsport Services, the team created by the youngest entrant at the Rolex 24 – J. Michael Johnson – had the kind of debut Rolex 24 that most teams can only dream about. Their #21 Gemstar Communications Nissan / Lola B2K / 40 driven by Andy Lally, Paul Macey, Martin Henderson and Peter Seldon took the lead from the Archangel #22 Budweiser Nissan / Lola driven by Jeff Clinton, Tony Dudek, Mike Durand and Andrew Davis at 04:45 on Sunday - and never looked back. "It wasn’t the perfect start to the meeting though. Mike Johnson explained: “#21, chassis 011, was only delivered last Saturday (January 27), and we’ve been working virtually all-nighters since to get it ready. We left at Atlanta at midnight last night to be here for setting up today (Wednesday).” The team completed a full rebuild on #21, as well as a gearbox rebuild on #22 – the crew assisted by Andy Lally and Paul Macey. They even had the fuel tank out on the day before the race, to fit an extra fuel pump. “I am not really sure we were essential in building the car,” said Paul Macey. “Basically, I sprung the car out of customs, swept the floors and ran errands. The crew is really efficient and I am not sure I could have offered more than a sandwich to help.” “I swept the floors and glued some stuff together, too,” said Andy Lally. “I don’t think that people really appreciate all the work that went into this car. These guys were exhausted from totally rebuilding it. I think a lot of other teams would have just done some minor changes and sent the car out, but that is not how the shop is run here. They worked essentially a week straight and then stayed up 36-hours straight for the race and still managed to beat everyone. This win came from hard work - not luck.” “We knew reliability was going to be the key to winning this race,” said Technical Director, Brian Andersen – beyond the #21 car in the practice photograph, with Mike Johnson attending to the splitter. “The other teams tried to run away at the beginning, but we just stayed with our projected lap times and it paid off. In a 24-hour event, it is absolutely necessary to maintain a steady pace and to save the car. If you go out and abuse your equipment, you are going to break. We could have gone out and outraced those other teams, but if we did, we would have ended up behind the wall. Archangel won this race because of brains, not brawn.” "After six hours racing, the two cars were third and fourth in SRPll, three and ten laps behind the leading Porsche Haus Lola. That car crashed spectacularly, the Swedish Lola had problems and suddenly, after eight hours, the Archangel cars were 1 –2 in class. They stayed that way for 12 hours, but in the nineteenth hour, Tony Dudek in #22 spun coming onto the banking. He restarted but drove up the banking, lost grip, gave it some power and squirmed out of control, being struck very firmly by the #09 AGT Camaro. The larger car survived to make the finish, but it was the end for the little Lola. “Losing the #22 car was a major disappointment for us, because at that time, both cars were running great, and no one could catch them,” said Mike Johnson. “We did experience a half shaft failure on that car, but we managed to change it in the rain (which looked a thoroughly cold and miserable procedure, but the team stuck at it, below) and send it back only 6 laps off the #21 car. It’s too bad because we were just holding on for the finish.” The Archangel Lolas still ‘finished’ first and fifth in class. “What a day!” said Andy Lally. “I remember thinking with about five hours to go, ‘Oh my gosh, we could win this thing,’ but I stopped myself from that so I didn’t jinx it. The reality is, it doesn’t get better than this. We won the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, I got a Rolex handed to me by Jackie Stewart, drank champagne and even snagged a piece of chocolate cake from the media center. Everyone keeps asking me what time it is. I can honestly say that even though I hear it a thousand times a day, I will NEVER get sick of it,” said Andy, looking at that timepiece on his wrist. "I never wear watches, but I'm not taking this one off. I'm going to wear it every day for at least a year. That's what I did with the rings I got for winning those karting championships. I wore them for a season and then I put them away. I have to get it sized though, because the band is too loose. Do you know where I can get that done, and what that costs?" Only two years ago Lally had plastered his racing resume on the walls of the men's rooms in the garage area at Daytona in the hopes of landing a ride in the largest sports car endurance event in North America. He’d previously driven two Motorola Cup races at Daytona, but this was his debut – and the same applied to Peter Seldon and Paul Macey. Martin Henderson had only driven in the race once. "I still can't believe he pulled it off,” said Lally of Mike Johnson. “He's a young Chip Ganassi. He has a good sense for where things are going. Given the proper funding, he has an extremely good chance to be an extremely successful team owner." "Before we showed up for this race, we set a game plan for what we thought was the best way to attack this track, but the word 'attack' is about as far as you can get from the description of what our plan was to win the Rolex 24," Lally notes. "Our first objective was to finish all 24 hours, and we knew that in order to do that we'd have to achieve our second objective, which was to save the equipment. We knew we had to be really careful not to over-tax our gearbox, our engine, our brakes or our clutch, because they're the parts subjected to the most stress in this event. "We never once the entire weekend drove anywhere near 100 percent of the car's capabilities. We had a 45-minute qualifying session, but we only stayed out 15 minutes in that session because we wanted to save the car. I bedded in brake rotors while I qualified.” "We knew we had to have very smooth gearshifts, and we short-shifted all weekend. The car is a six-speed, but we only used five gears. We did three full stints on one set of our Avon tires. We took everything really easy. Overall we had to be patient. My team-mates and I did the best we could to take care of the crew's work, and it paid off." Andy Lally ended up driving almost 10 hours of the 24-hour race. He was behind the wheel for both the start and the finish. His first stint was a triple, followed by a little more than two hours at 12:15 a.m. and 5 a.m. and two and a half-hours at 10:30 a.m. Sunday until the checkered waved at 1 p.m. "I remember the beginning and the end, but the middle is sort of a blur," he admits. Only the middle, Andy? "The hardest part physically was around 1 or 2 a.m., because we got caught off guard by a torrential downpour," he adds. "We had just had a fuel stop and we put intermediate Avon tires on. I went out and a couple laps later it started to pour. I just had to do what the car could do, and I was getting passed left and right, and cars were spinning all over the place. We got caught out twice in the rain with slicks on; almost everybody got caught out at least once. Those were the scariest moments. You just had to slow down and circulate, and keep on doing laps. You had to keep your head and keep focused on the goal at hand, which was to be smooth for the entire race and never put any undue stress on the car." “Wen I got in at 5 a.m. we were in second place in class, about two laps out of the lead," Lally recalls. "When I came in for fuel the next time, Mike leaned in and told me that we had taken the lead. At the same time we lost all radio communication. That was extremely bad because of the weather. I told him the radio was dead and we'd have to watch the lap count through the scoring pylon. I kept checking it when I went through turn four, and then I'd come in when I knew we had to be getting close on fuel. I told Mike that if he wanted me in before that, he'd better get everybody he knew to stand out on pit lane and wave to me, because it was hard to see anything with all the spray from the cars in the rain. "We did have contact once; somebody drove into a tire wall while I was sleeping and we lost six laps," Lally notes. "We lost some of the front aerodynamics on the left side, as well as the headlight, but the crew made quick repairs and we were back on track quickly." ""At 10:30 on Sunday morning I knew we were up on second place by a lot of laps, and if we just kept our easy pace and an eye on the overall leader, no matter what happened we'd have the class win," Lally says. "That was slightly nerve wracking, because we had lost first gear by that point. Just to be safe, when I left pit lane for the last stint I put it in fifth gear and just kept it there. That was pretty wild in the hairpins and the rain.” Joining the team for the first time at Daytona was Ryan Eversley, a regular on the PSCR Forum. Now come on Mike, admit it, Ryan was your lucky mascot, wasn’t he? Isn’t that why he was always standing around watching proceedings (above)? Or was Ryan the team manager? Well done Archangel Motorsports. Next stop, the Grand Am series proper. But they’ve already won that! Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport