What's got four wheels, eight legs and 13 AMA national championships under its kidney belt? The Spirit of Daytona Racing team's drivers for the Rolex 24, America's toughest car endurance race.
The dynamic, motorcycle-racing trio of Scott "Mr. Daytona" Russell, multi-time AMA motocross and supermoto champion Jeff Ward and former AMA 750cc Supersport, Formula Xtreme and World Endurance Champion Jason Pridmore were awakened from semi-retirement to drive for this AMA Pro Racing-sponsored team. Of the three, only Ward had prior car-racing experience, having done a stint in Indycars in which he very nearly won the Indianapolis 500.
These bike racers were joined by veteran race-car driver Guy Cosmo, who qualified the Porsche Cayenne V-8-powered, Coyote-chassied Daytona Prototype 13th on the grid of 49 entries with a lap at 1:42.475-more than 6 seconds quicker than Russell pushed his Yamaha Superbike around the famed 3.56-mile course in 1998.
Driving in one-hour stints, the team endured more than its share of mechanical maladies, starting with a clutch that quit with 23 hours to go, a weak alternator that kept them from using their air-conditioned driving suits, a sticky throttle and a pit fire that broke out less than four hours from the finish.
"Man, I'm glad I wasn't fully strapped in that cage," said Russell, the five-time Daytona 200 winner whose stellar bike-racing career was cut short by a horrific starting-line crash there 10 years ago. Before slithering back into the dusty-yet-repaired car, he remarked, "We're gonna show these car guys what bike racers are made of."
From there, Mr. Daytona and company soldiered on, eventually bringing the car home in 11th place after 649 laps in 24 hours-a virtual win for this new team in a race where fewer than half the field took the checkered flag.