THE NEXT LEVEL? Grand-Am expects a good year in 2007.(Motorsports)

Byline: STEVEN COLE SMITH

Moments before the green flag fell on the 49th Daytona 500, the No. 09 "Spirit of Daytona'' Crawford-Pontiac, which competes in the Grand-Am Sports Car Series, completed a flying lap around the speedway. Team owner Troy Flis was at the wheel, cementing the impression for the NASCAR crowd-Grand-Am hoped, anyway-that if you like stock car racing, you ought to like sports car racing, too.

Certainly, the track announcer made that point, inviting the capacity crowd to the Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 24 and back to Daytona for Grand-Am's July 5 race. The Grand-Am literature points out that the series, while it has the same Daytona Beach address as NASCAR's corporate office, "operates as its own stand-alone corporation with a group of independent investors and its own board of advisors.''

Perhaps. But since the Grand American Road Racing Association was established in 1999, there has been no doubt that it would operate under many of the tenets that made NASCAR so popular. One of them: a racer-friendly rules package that gives competitors several ways to get into the series, whether you're Chip Ganassi going for the overall Daytona Prototype championship or a couple of guys who want to race a Chevrolet Cobalt on weekends in a support series.

Even at the top level, it isn't that expensive. A brand-new prototype chassis costs between $400,000 and $550,000, but it should be good for several seasons, and if you can't afford that, there are plenty of used Daytona Prototypes on the market. The V8 engines aren't allowed to have superchargers or turbo-chargers and, pumping out only about 500 hp, can last most of a season with comparatively minor work.

Grand-Am's problem always has been keeping the fans' attention for the rest of the season following its headline-making opener with the 24 Hour. This year, thanks in part to having the first 90 minutes of the race carried live on Fox TV, Grand-Am was pleased with the ratings. The balance of the race, carried on cable by Speed, had ratings 28 percent above the 2006 race. And while Grand-Am was happy with the ratings on Fox, a 0.88 with about 1.2 million viewers, ratings for the Daytona 500, also on Fox, suggest there's plenty of room for improvement: That race averaged a 10.1 rating, with about 17.5 million viewers, and even that was lower than NASCAR had hoped for.

So how does Grand-Am take its sports car racing to the next level? "I think the pieces are in place,'' says driver and team owner Wayne Taylor. "We just need more promotion and more corporate involvement.'' Which is, Taylor acknowledges, easier said than done.