Happy Birthday today to former F1 World Champion Jody Scheckter (born 1/29/50),

and to former Atlantics and new ChampCar driver Alex Figge (born 1/29/82)

For the second year in a row it was a Chip Gannasi owned car that crossed the finish line first to take overall win at the Rolex 24 Hour race held this weekend at Daytona. While the owner, car and sponsorship may have been familiar from last year, it was a different driver line up with veteran sporst car racer Scott Pruett being joined by Rolex rookies Juan Pablo Montoya and Salvador Duran.

Montoya’s win means he becomes the first person to win the Rolex 24, the Indy 500 and the Monaco Grand prix. A good start to his new career on the American racing circuit as he prepares for the upcoming Daytona 500 and the new NASCAR season.

The trio’s Lexus Riley (below) was strong contender all through the event leading the majority of laps. After 24 hours of racing the 01 winning car finished just 1m15.842sec ahead of the No. 11 Pontiac Riley driven by Milka Duno, Patrick Carpentier, Darren Manning and Ryan Dalziel.

With just an hour to go there were three cars still on the lead lap, but the third placed No. 10 Sun Trust Pontiac Riley of  Jan Magnussen, Max Angelelli, Wayne Taylor and Jeff Gordon suffered brake problems which dropped it out of contention, but it still limped home in third place two lpas down.

The roll out of new Grand Prix challengers continues with the roll out of the new F1 car from Red Bull racing.

Although it has already been seen on track, the 2007 Renault F1 car was officially launched this week with a new orange color scheme.

Happy Birthday to sports car racer, Champ-Car team owner and sometime actor Paul Newman (born 1/26/25)

(and that number 80 on the side of the car - that was his age - and he won the race!)