Race Report.(Competitions.)

Last year, only four of the then-new Daytona Proto-types were at Phoenix for the Grand-Am Rolex series weekend. This year a series-record 19 of them were in the paddock, and they would have to squeeze their way through the 1.51-mile track's 11 turns in the company of nearly two dozen GT and Super Grand Sport cars.

Hurley Haywood did the pre-race math. "That's only 180 feet of track per car,'' he figured.

Hey, Hurley, that's plenty if you parade around in single file. "Hey,'' Hurley responded, "we're racers. We don't like single file.''

In other words, "Every corner is going to be a lottery,'' predicted Oswaldo Negri Jr., whose racing career started when his father won a piece of a Brazilian lottery and bought then nine-year-old Oswaldo a go-kart.

Negri Jr. appeared to have lost Phoenix's first-corner lottery, but the car that took third place from him was one of three penalized for jumping the start. That start hinted that instead of a parade we might witness some serious, car-damaging fights for whatever real estate wasn't occupied. Often it didn't seem to matter if someone was already there.

Full-caution yellows came out on the 11th, 25th, 34th and 40th laps, and there were three more in the later stages of a race stopped not by the conclusion of the scheduled 166-lap event but by a two-hour, 45-minute time limit.

For the third time in as many races this season, one of Chip Ganassi's Lexus-powered Rileys sat on the pole. Max Papis led the first 24 laps, then turned into the pits just as Wayne Taylor's ...