The Rolex Grand-Am racing event, which one of the most competitive and renowned sports events celebrated all around the world is witnessing a change. It is definitely a positive change that is happening in the Rolex Grand-Am with the introduction of new racecar debuts. The 2012 Lotus Evora GX will be soon seen competing in the Rolex Grand-Am series.

The trend of new cars participating in the Rolex Grand-Am event is also new and has its own positives as well as negative. The concept of introducing new cars has been introduced because of the changing market demands. The Lotus has revealed that its new Evora race car will soon be seen on the race tracks in the newly established GX experimental class in the Grand-Am Rolex series. The experimental event is to ensure that the new cars are fit for competing in as tough and competitive an event like the Rolex Grand-Am. The fuel, the make and the design of the car all has to be extremely fit for participating in a global event such as Rolex Grand-Am. The new Evora, even though is based on the Evora sports coupe, however, it is more aggressive. Particularly aggressive is the body kit of the Lotus Evora that will be participating in the GX experimental. No traction control and a bigger price tag are two other features that come in packaged with the Lotus Evora.

The initial Lotus Evora GT4 is being replaced to bring in more aggression and more power-packed performances in the Rolex Grand-Am vent. The initial Evora GT4 was a GT4-class racecar that competed in the FIA competition. Thereafter, came GTC, which was the American-spec car that raced in the Grand-Am series in the GT class. The GX is a new class, a second GT-class, which has been created recently by the Rolex Sports Car Series. It was an experimental class that has been created to eventually allow a new technology to enter into the word of Rolex Series. Different engines and technologies will be replacing the existing ones. The first entrant of the GX class was Mazda. Mazda has pledged that it will supply Skyactiv-D diesel race engines for some challengers. This will be a completely new phase for the Rolex Series as well the participating racers.

Lotus engineers have replaced the traction control and anti-lock brakes; instead they have built a stronger roll cage in the new car for meeting the new regulations that have been introduced for the Grand-Am races. The changes that have been introduced in the racecar are aerodynamic in nature. These include a new splitter, front bumper as well as standard Rolex series rear wings. The wheel arches have been flared to fit the wider wheels. The new racecars are also featuring a new fuel filler system, continental tires as well as yellow headlamps. The new model is powered by an engine which produces 440 hp and 325 hp of torque. The 4.0-L V6 engine is said to be much better than the engines that are currently used in the racecars. The 2012 Lotus Evora GX that is prices at a hefty $335,000 will be built to order.

It hasn’t been more than a week that the Rolex Grand-Am event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway came to an end that a new challenge is about to begin. The winning team of the Rolex Grand-Am event is ready to race again. The enthusiasm of the Rolex series race is being extended to another major racing event that will be held this Saturday. CORE Autosports is expected to do its best in the chase of victory in Saturday’s Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge. The team will be working hard to maintain its record and emerge victorious at American Le Mans Series (ALMS) season.

Teams and drivers are geared-up for another exciting challenge. Jon Bennett, Colin Braun, Ryan Dalziel and Alex Popow are the names that will be competing in the Round 6 of the 2012 ALMS season. Bennett and Braun are the part of the same team. Team founder/owner Bennett and his teammate Braun will be in the #05 Composite Resources ORECA FLM09, which is new for the two. The sister #06 Soloson Import cars will be driven by Alex Popow and his co-driver Dalziel. Popow bagged the number 1 spot in the inaugural race at Rolex Grand-Am event at Indianapolis. Once, again he will be paired with Dalziel, who is a class winner at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was Dalziel with whom Popow had co-driven the #06 to victory lane at Long Beach.

The two teams will be competing to win the 2012 ALMS PC driver champion(s). Both the teams are so strong that it is impossible to say which one will win. The Mid-Ohio will decide the fate of the teams. In John Bennett’s word’s, “I’m looking forward to going to Mid-Ohio. It’s a track I don’t have a lot of experience at and I look forward to building my knowledge and skills there. Having Colin as my co-driver has been a great help and allows for a shorter learning curve, so I expect to be up to speed fairly quickly. For CORE autosport, I’m looking forward to continuing the momentum we’ve set for the first half of this season. Hopefully we can avoid Murphy’s Law and end up with a good finish.As this season gets closer and closer to completion, there has been a fair amount of discussion about the number of races to go and the number of points earned. I’ve not given it that much thought, preferring to look at each weekend as an individual event and grading the #05 team – and my – performance on an individual, per-race basis.”

Alex Popow said, “Winning at Indianapolis was an incredible experience and it couldn’t have been more perfect. Based on the strength of that result I’m ready for a win at Mid-Ohio.I’m getting used to good things when working with CORE autosport, but we have to push for it. People think it’s easy because the team has won four out of the five races, but it’s not as easy as it looks. You’ve got to always do a great job, make no mistakes and have a little luck. And these guys do that week in and week out. Mid-Ohio is not an easy track. There are limited places to pass and you’ve got to keep your focus all the time, too look for holes in traffic and keep your car on track.”

With Sebastien Bourdais and Alex Popow emerging victorious in the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series, the Brickyard Grand Prix, it is the first North American Endurance Championship (NAEC) title that Starworks Motorsports has won. The duo survived tough times in the Brickyard Grand Prix and stood victorious at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Bourdais, was driving the anchor leg and pulled away on the final restart on the 2.534-mile Indy road course. He was driving in the No. 2 Soloson Ford/Riley to bag the Daytona Prorotype division’s first NAE Championship. This year’s Rolex Car Series races have been one of the greatest ever. Starworks winning the Rolex Championship has been like a dream come true for the team members.

Popow said, “It’s amazing, sitting here in first place at the Brickyard — it’s like a dream come true. This is something I’ve been chasing all year.” The year 2012 has been of much importance to the Starworks team. For Starworks it has been a year of achievements and accomplishments. The Brickyard victory was the last feather in the hat for the Starworks team. The team had won in the endurance test at Sebbring and Le Mans. It had also finished second in the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.

The Indianapolis 500 expert, Scott Pruett, along with team mate Memo Rojas finished second in the No.1 TELMEX BMW Riley. Pruett has shown fantastic spirit throughout the competition. “I think this hat says it all: Super Weekend,” Pruett said. “I think most everything took place — it rained, we had a tore-up race car — but we managed to scratch back and finish second.”The third to finish are Max Angelelli and Ricky Taylor. The team bagged the third spot driving in the No. 10 SunTrust Racing Corvette fielded by Wayne Taylor Racing of nearby Brownsburg, Ind.

The event was not a smooth ride with racers bumping into each other, exuding a strong sense of competition and that too an aggressive one. There were three caution periods after the lead was taken by Bourdais. However, the experienced and intelligent racer was able to pull away on restart each time. The amount of aggression and heat shown by the racers in the wild race, which featured 13 lead changes, was slowed nine times by caution. There was fender-banging action, which increased manifold due to the heavy rain that was witnessed twice. The rain made the conditions all the more difficult. Within a three hour event the rains poured twice, adding difficulty and trickiness to the track conditions.

Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Dixon, who were driving in the No.1 Chevron BMW/Riley Ganassi, created controversy with his driving stint, bumping into Joajo Barbosa and then into Ryan Dalziel. Andy Lally and John Potter finished fifth overall.” Just amazing. We just won Indy,” said Lally, who was the last season’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year. He added, “I’ve said it 60 times since we took the checkered flag, but it was such a hard-fought battle all day long with those guys.”

It is a fable for those who believe in them. For Roger Chapman, who is 53-years-old, returning to the Ailsa Course, is an endearing experience. The first time that Chapman came to Turnberry, he was merely a bystander who was awestruck by the magic of the event. With a victory in this week’s Rolex Senior Open Championship, he will be creating a story that one gets to listen to very rarely. A win in this week’s Rolex event and Chapman will become the only the second person to complete the Rolex Grand Slam of senior Majors, having already procured the US Open and USPGA titles. “I can hardly believe it myself if I’m honest, it’s one of those Cinderella stories, too far-fetched to be true”, said Chapman.

It is an emotional moment for everyone close to Chapman. His friends, fans, followers and family are absolutely ecstatic. Chapman’s wife is overflowing with joy. He revealed, “She told me all those years ago that I ought to have more faith in myself but I never did. I had an ok career but I’m the first to admit it didn’t live up to my expectations or anyone else’s and I threw away tournaments. If only I knew then what I know now. That Sunday at the US Open, well I’ve never known a day like that, where I had total belief in what I was doing. I felt in complete control and it is not often as a golfer you can say that.”

Chapman will be second to create history only after legendary Gary Player created a marvellous record, in 1988, with his Senior Open title coming at Turnberry as well. Chapman recollects the events of his career ups and downs. He can hardly believe that what is happening is happening to him. “I’d qualified as an amateur, first at West Herts Golf Club and then at Western Gailes. I remember standing on the seventh tee looking out over the Ailsa Course, gazing at the huge crowds and thinking: ‘What on earth am I doing here?’ I felt totally out of my depth”, revealed Chapman. It took him time to settle down with the enthusiasm and pace of the events, but at present, he is confident about his game. He said, “I’m a bit more experienced now and full of confidence after my senior Major wins so I won’t be feeling quite the same as I did then.It would be a dream to win another Major on home soil.

His recent victories have added to his self-confidence. In fact, Chapman has improved at the game with his age. His achievements in the present year have left him stunned. He said, “It hasn’t sunk in yet, but it’s special. Only three others have done a double with the US Senior PGA and the US Senior Open in the same season so to follow in Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Hale Irwin’s footsteps is a true honour”.

As far as his preparations for the Rolex Grand Am are concerned, he said, “Winning at Indianwood was good preparation for the Senior Open. The course reminded me of the links courses of Scotland. The layout certainly had a Scottish feel. So I’ll be aiming to use all that experience and all the confidence I’ve gained to complete the set. It would be a dream to win the Senior Open where I played my first Open as a raw amateur 35 years ago.”

Scott Donald Pruett, the American race car driver, who has been at the top in the competition ever since he began racing, holds a very special place for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in his heart. After the Rolex Series event, he became all the more emotional about the great times he had driving at Indianapolis. The Rolex racing events have given him much to remember but the track has given him some more cherishable moments. Scott Pruett has always exhibited the enthusiasm of a winner at the Rolex events that he has raced in, no matter what the end result was.

Even though he has contested in uncountable races in many series at a number of venues, but he was still giddy and nervous to return to the Indianapolis. Anybody would feel nervous to race at a track for which there is supreme respect in the racer’s heart. The most successful driver in the Grand-Am said, “I never thought I would race there again.I wasn’t going to race in NASCAR and I wasn’t going to race in IndyCar and certainly not in Formula One while it was there. I thought it would be limited going there. I went there as part of the ‘hundred’ celebration and the running of 500 and this year around the team and spent some time with all the Ganassi  guys, but never thought about going back and actually racing. When we tested, I believe in 2009 and we came away from it just going, ‘Wow, I hope there’s some way this can get pulled off between Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Grand Am.’ And here we are.”

Such enthusiasm from someone who started car racing at the age of eight is surprising. Pruett raced the 2000 season in NASCAR Winston Cup Series and then moved back to sports car racing. He has been racing in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series since the year 2004. Pruett, who is now 52 years old, has run four IndyCar and two NASCAR Sprint Cup races at the Indianapolis track. He still considers every race at Indianapolis as a new experience.

Regarding the Brickyard he said his level of anticipation is “Massive”. He added, “When people think or talk about Indianapolis, when you travel throughout the world, people know. People know where that is and what it is and had such tradition with the 500 and then expanding that tradition with the Brickyard (400), then with the motorcycle race, as well as Formula One, while it was there, and now for us to be the next extension with the Rolex sports car series is absolutely, for me, a dream come true. When IndyCar was there and being Rookie of the Year there in ‘89 and then doing NASCAR, and now I go back in sports cars, it’s a dream come true.”

Pruett has many fond memories of the Indianapolis track. He said that probably the best of his achievements there has been of 1995, when he took a lead there despite all odds.