WINNERS The team of Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon and Casey Mears survived the Rolex 24 to give car owner Chip Ganassi a victory in America's most prestigious sports car endurance event. Reigning Indy Racing League champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Wheldon, former IRL champ Dixon and NASCAR star Mears drove together for the first time and put together a solid effort on the way to victory Sunday. Avoiding major trouble was the key in this grueling twice-around-the-clock battle that saw seven different leaders, all of them among the 31 Daytona Prototypes that started at the front of the 66-car field at 12:10 p.m. Saturday. The winning Lexus Riley covered 734 laps and 2,613.04 miles on Daytona International Speedway's 3.56-mile, 14-turn road circuit. That was good for a one-lap victory over the Lexus Riley of Champ Car teammates A.J. Allmendinger and Justin Wilson and Oswaldo Negri and Mark Patterson. The winner among the 400-horsepower GT entries was the Porsche GT3 Cup car driven by Randy Pobst, Michael Levitas, Ian Baas and Spencer Pumpelly, finishing ninth overall. NASCAR drivers Rusty Wallace and Tony Stewart fell out of the race with mechanical problems.(ESPN.com/AP)
INFO: more information about the race at grandamerican.com, Daytona Beach News Journal, Daytona Intl Speedway site or daytona24hr.com..(1-29-2006)