GRAND-AM Road Racing

This article is courtesy of Marshall Pruett, SPEEDtv.com

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - One notable absence from last month's GRAND-AM Rolex 24 race was the #61 Ford Riley of AIM Autosport. Led by Ian Willis, the overachieving group of Canadian sportscar specialists made the tough call to sit out the big Daytona opener in order to stretch a tight budget across the final 11 races of the season.

Ian Willis leads a savvy group of Canadian sportscar professionals that are accustomed to punching well above their weight. For a team accustomed to waging full-season campaigns, Willis says the choice to drop the Rolex 24 in favor of beginning AIM's 2010 championship next weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway was one of the hardest decisions a team principal could make.

"It was tough, indeed. The emotions behind it all makes you want to do the 24. It's a prestigious event, it's the Super Bowl on our calendar. But the practical side says: dollars per point. When you've got a fixed budget for the season and that budget is short, simply assessing the dollars per point ratio was the thing that tipped the scale and led us to stay home. We just had to sit down and remove emotion from it and say, you know what? - it's in our best interest to skip the event simply because 24-Hour races are an expensive undertaking. That was the bottom line."

While Willis continues to work on filling out their budget, he says AIM's quest for funding is on an upward trend.

"Things are actually looking pretty decent but I see the economy turning around and I see lots of positive things happening. We're still working hard on sponsorship, as we speak, for this season and for next year."

With the close nature of Rolex Series competition, AIM will face a daunting challenge at Homestead-Miami when they start their bid for the teams' championship. Although their drivers, Mark Wilkins and Burt Frisselle, competed and earned driver's points at the Rolex 24 in a partnership with Michael Shank Racing, Willis knows AIM Autosport will have to be perfect in the remaining races if they are to overcome the deficit in the teams' battle.

"The series is so competitive that you can't give up anything to anybody and missing a race like that does hurt our team points. We've spotted everybody at race basically and you can't afford to do that in the Rolex Series. So it certainly has - I'm not going to say it has removed us from the points chase - but it handicaps us from the points chase from the team perspective. The good news is our drivers were able to drive for Mike Shank and we're very grateful to Mike for giving them that opportunity and they scored fifth place points in the 60 car. So Burt and Mark are going into Homestead with fifth place points and AIM's coming in at zero."

For a hyper-competitive group like AIM Autosport, watching the Rolex 24 on TV wasn't easy, but Willis says it didn't take long to get his crew on board with going full-tilt on a slightly abbreviated season.

"We're lucky. I've got a good group of guys. We are a small team so it's easy to go out on to the shop floor and just talk to everybody and say, okay, guys here's the deal, here's the decision process we've gone through - and I've got complete support from the guys. They've been very understanding and, as they said, well, the last two years, unfortunately, we didn't have good results at the 24. We started those seasons in the hole, we're just starting the season in the hole again. So I guess our emphasis is to know that we can do it and certainly we want it to go better than it did last year and be in the top five and hopefully the top three at the end of the year. Obviously, the championship is the goal but I think the pragmatic realism is when you've got Ganassi and GAINSCO and Brumos and Shank and those teams who are doing a full season, you can't spot them any advantage at all, but we're ready to fight."

With Frisselle and Wilkins back for another season, Wills expects the same top-tier performance from his young guns. Skipping the pre-Rolex 24 tests at Daytona hurt the team's development program for 2010, but the #61 Ford Riley has been sent early from AIM's base in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada, to conduct a test in North Carolina before rolling into the Homestead-Miami paddock.

"Fortunately, from the driver's point of view we're in good shape. They are fresh after racing at Daytona. It's the crew and the team -- we didn't get any testing in, we didn't do the January test days -- so we're behind the eight ball there. GRAND-AM has done a very good job with cost control and one of those cost controls is regulating testing. They have awarded us a two-day test to allow us to kind of shakedown and get some cobwebs blown out for the crew at Carolina Motorsports Park. Basically, the test plan is to just treat it like a race event where we more or less just practice our tire changes, practice pit stops, do - not a race run - but mock qualifying and just get everybody back in the groove and back in the game and caught up on what we've been missing."

With Wilkins and Frisselle at the helm once again, the #61 Ford Riley is expected to feature in the remaining 11 rounds of the GRAND-AM Rolex Series. AIM Autosport made its name in the Rolex Series by earning victories and routinely finishing towards the front on a fraction of the budget that some teams have access to, and as Willis explains, they will continue to enjoy playing the role of underdogs this year.

"Very definitely. I can hold my head high and say I can race against Ganassi and Penske or anyone else on an equal footing in the series, and that's why we're in it. That's what we like about the series. Burt and Mark will be in their second year together as a pairing. The good drivers come to the top, the teams that do their work and put a good car on track and make the right calls, can win. You don't have to have a factory budget behind you to be competitive. Last year, quite frankly, we didn't get the results we expected because in '08 we won races and in '09 we felt like we could continue that and, unfortunately, weren't able to. We plan to pick up where we left off in '08 and to be challenging for race wins for the rest of the season."