PERFECTION REWARDED; A clean, trouble-free run gives Chip Ganassi a Daytona record.(Competition)

Byline: GARY WATKINS

No fewer than six cars had a real shot of winning the 24 Hours of Daytona with just more than six hours remaining in the race. In the end, Chip Ganassi Racing in partnership with Felix Sabates notched up a unique Daytona hat trick. Ganassi's Riley-Lexus, driven by Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas, Dario Franchitti and Juan Pablo Montoya, wasn't the fastest car during Grand-Am's season opener, but it was the most reliable.

Six Daytona Prototypes remained on the lead lap as dawn broke over the 3.56-mile circuit, but one by one, Ganassi's rivals dropped out of contention during the final hours. The race boiled down to a two-way fight with just more than three hours to go, when the best Michael Shank Racing Riley-Pontiac, driven at the time by Burt Frisselle, straight-lined the bus-stop chicane after a rear suspension failure. Frisselle smoked his way to the pits for lengthy repairs.

A race that had promised a thrilling fight all the way to the finish was as good as over.

The 11th-hour dramas for Ganassi's challengers take nothing away from the team's third win in as many years, a 24 Hours of Daytona record. (The Brumos Racing team won three straight Daytona enduros in the 1970s, but not in consecutive years, as the energy crisis meant no race was held in 1974.) This win followed the template the team laid down in 2007: a race free of mechanical problems, while the drivers stayed on-track.

"Just like last year, we had zero problems,'' Pruett said. "We didn't hit anyone, and we didn't touch anyone.''

There was one difference compared with 2007, however. "Last year, we always felt we had a car that was fast enough to win,'' reckoned Montoya. "This year was different.''