One of the few honors that Jon Fogarty and the GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing Team did not capture in 2009 was the Rolex Move of the Year, which went to Brumos Racing’s victory in the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona.
The video of David Donohue holding off TELMEX Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates’ Juan Pablo Montoya took top honors in balloting on grand-am.com over four other videos, which were led by Fogarty’s race-winning pass of Ganassi’s Scott Pruett atop the Corkscrew at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Fogarty agreed with the fans’ voting – although he didn’t feel that the winning pass at Laguna was his personal best move of the season.
“I thought the Brumos guys were pretty well deserving of the Moment of the Year for their win at Daytona,” Fogarty said on Tuesday’s Grand-Am Weekly. “The reality was that the pass I had on the Penske car at Montreal was a lot more harrowing than the one I had at Monterrey. It didn’t look as spectacular, but it was very close to being a disaster.
“ I was having a great battle with Romain (Dumas), although it could have been Timo (Bernhard) in the Penske car. They got ahead of us through pit stops. I came out of the pits on cold tires and they got by me. We had a good battle going on – very evenly matched – and I was able to get a good run coming out of the hairpin, close enough that when we came to that chicane, I just went hard, hard, hard on the brakes. You run a hard compound of brakes at that track – because it eats up brakes so badly – so I was probably pushing 1300-1,400 pounds of pedal pressure when I made that pass. We were both on the limit and we both made it through that corner, which is a rarity, because usually somebody ends up straight-lining the chicane or somebody bashes over the curbs. I was pretty happy with that move.”
