Corvette Is Survivor in Endurance Victory

After his team had overcome a 26-lap deficit, Ron Fellows wasn’t about to settle for sitting quietly in his pit stall while securing victory in the Rolex 24-Hours sports-car race.

The Canadian driver was at the wheel of the leading car Sunday when a dash alarm went off after 23 hours 30 minutes of America’s most prestigious road race, signaling an overheating problem in the gearbox of his Corvette.

Fellows--cruising with an unbeatable 19-lap lead--quickly brought the car to the pits, where it was decided to play it safe and wait for the final moments before going back on track.

“It certainly was one of the stranger things I’ve done, sitting there waiting for the race to be over, even though we had won it,” Fellows said.

Although the Grand American Road Racing rules did not require him to be on the track at the end, that’s where he was, going out with five minutes remaining and driving three slow laps around Daytona International Speedway’s 3.56-mile road circuit to finish the job he started Saturday at 10 a.m. PST.

As Fellows drove the yellow No. 2 Corvette under the waving checkered flag, teammates Chris Kneifel and Johnny O’Connell of the United States and Franck Freon of France celebrated in the pits along with the rest of Team Corvette.

The winners were able to give Corvette its biggest sports-car victory because the favored Dyson Racing entry ran into engine problems for the second consecutive year.

It also was the first time Chevy has won the overall title in the race since Roger Penske’s Chevrolet-powered Lola prevailed in 1969 with Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons driving.

The pole-winning Riley & Scott Ford, co-driven by Butch Leitzinger and Englishmen James Weaver and Andy Wallace, held off a strong bid from a Ferrari 333SP prototype and was racing toward what would have been owner Rob Dyson’s third Daytona victory in five years.

At 9:30 a.m., only 3 1/2 hours from the end of the grueling event, three-time race winner Leitzinger was at the wheel when booming sounds erupted from the engine and a puff of gray smoke signaled the end of its race.

The Corvette won by eight laps over the GT class Porsche driven by Mike Fitzgerald, Randy Pobst, Christian Menzel of Germany and Lucas Luhr of Monaco.

The Corvette covered 656 laps and 2,335.360 miles at an average of 97.306 mph--thanks to an almost race-long rain the slowest winning speed since 1989.

Much attention was focused on Team Corvette’s second entry, co-driven by road racing veterans Andy Pilgrim and Kelly Collins and NASCAR stars Dale Earnhardt and son Dale Jr., both making their first sports-car start. Their Corvette overcame transmission problems and a series of spins to finish fourth.