4 car diary - Rolex 24, Bringing it home

A two-three Crawford finish
By Bill King

Not much changed from the final restart to the checkered flag for the Rolex 24 at Daytona just past noon Sunday. Jimmie Johnson in The Boss Snowplow No. 4 Howard-Boss Motorsports Pontiac Crawford cruised along some dozen laps behind Max Angelelli in the No. 10 Pontiac Riley.

With Johnson lapping in the 1:52 range to conserve fuel, his Crawford teammate Jan Lammers moved the No. 20 within striking distance some 10sec back. With time winding down, Lammers continued to press the issue until about 10 minutes remained with the gap at around five seconds. And there it stayed until Lammers closed up to the final margin of 0.439sec for a well- earned team photo-op finish, considering the travails both race teams had experienced.

The No. 4 team drivers - Butch Leitzinger, Elliott Forbes-Robinson and Jimmie Johnson - now will be interviewed ad nauseum until no empty cassette tapes remain in Volusia County, Fla. But for the past three days, you've been privvy to the driver/crew conversations you're not likely to hear on TV.

Johnson won bragging rights for the NASCAR portion of SpeedWeeks coming up, being the highest placing Nextel Cup racer in this year's Rolex 24. And yes, he's a really good guy.

Editor's note:
Please view all the diary entries by Bill King on the No. 4 Howard-Boss Motorsports Pontiac Crawford at http://www.motorsport.com/news/series.asp?S=GRANDAM