This weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Corvettes, Porsches, BMWs are a dime a dozen. All will be competing in this weekend’s GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami.  

Florida-area drivers are also a dime a dozen at the track. Born, raised or current residents, many Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series drivers and teams have called South Florida home at one point of their lives. Included among them is Shane Lewis, driver of the No. 3 Southard Motorsports Lexus Riley Daytona Prototype.

 

“One of the best reasons to live in Florida is that I get to have several ‘home’ tracks,” said the transplanted California native, who now calls Jupiter, Fla. home. “Homestead-Miami Speedway is one of the best of them and I always love racing here. Not only do I get local fans that have been cheering me on for years, I even have corner workers that wear ‘Go, Shane, Go’ T-shirts while on duty. There is always a special incentive to do well in front of your home crowd.”

 

It’s true, Florida is to many drivers and teams and, as can be debated, the official and unofficial start to the season. The Rolex 24 At Daytona kicked off the season in January, but South Florida drivers call the GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami their home event and unofficially the kick off to the season. It marks the first race in two months and the first following the Rolex 24.

 

Therefore, the home track status becomes even more important as drivers look to play off a strong finish in the Rolex 24, or get back on track – literally and figuratively – following what may have been a disappointing performance at Daytona.

 

Take, for example, Oswaldo Negri, one of many Brazilian drivers who has made Miami home. Negri earned the pole for the Rolex 24, but his team struggled with an incident in the final third of the race and didn’t come home with the sought-after victory. The team came home instead with a sixth-place finish.

 

Which makes it even more important if he and co-driver Patterson want to battle for the championship. Being at Homestead gives himself and the rest of the Michael Shank Racing Ford Riley team a chance to regroup, obviously for title purposes.

 

“The atmosphere at Michael Shank Racing is fantastic,” said Negri, who co-drives the No. 60 Ford Riley. “We’ve been working so hard all this time, but with this Roush-Yates Ford power, the new Riley bodywork, and the Pirelli tire, we are really seeing the results on the time sheets from all this work through the years.”

 

But, it’s also important for Negri to do well in front of his family and friends.

 

“Since I live down here, this race is also very special because I have so many friends and family here for the race, and it motivates me just that little extra bit,” he said.

 

Others hold true to the new beginning in different ways. Cheever Racing’s Matteo Bobbi will leave his Milan, Italy home and live in Miami Beach during the season. The year-round warm weather was one of the attractions to the area, but he listed other reasons for his living decision.

 

“I know that you are all envying me,” Bobbi said in a recent grand-am.com weekly journal entry, “but the real reason behind the move is to avoid part of the trans-oceanic trips that are exhausting. I will anyway come back to Europe from time to time to catch up with my friends and family.”

 

Aside from Lewis, Negri and Bobbi, other Daytona Prototype drivers making South Florida home include John Pew (North Palm Beach), Guy Cosmo (West Palm Beach), Justin Bell (Delray Beach) and Jim Matthews (Boca Raton).

 

Carlos de Quesada doesn’t have his Daytona Prototype program up and running yet, but his GT team certainly sits strong. de Quesada and his two-car Alegra Motorsports Porsche GT3 team are housed in South Florida, with de Quesada calling Coral Gables, Fla. home. His businesses, including team sponsor TodayMD.com, lie there as well.

“I mean it’s definitely a hometown event,” de Quesada said. “I grew up in Tampa but all my family or a lot of my family lives right here in Miami. You know, I’ll have a lot of family and friends here for sure and I’ve always known a lot of people in the South Florida area, mostly from racing, and established really good relationships with a lot of people. You know they love attending the races, too, so I’ll see them down here. They’ll come and hang out with us. Our team is really open to all of our friends to come hang out with us.”

 

Tim Lewis Jr. is from Boca Raton and has stayed their throughout his life. His co-driver Lawson Aschenbach is originally from Maryland, but has since moved to the area. They drive for Autohaus Motorsports, a new Rolex GT team which fields a Pontiac GXP.R and calls Delray Beach home.

 

Joseph Safina is another driver with essentially a new team for the GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami. Celebrating a homecoming and the start of the upcoming baseball season, Safina, of Fort Lauderdale, has his No. 74 Safina Racing with Mitchum Motorsports Porsche GT3 sporting a Florida Marlins paint scheme.

 

But drivers aren’t alone in their Florida bases. Several teams won’t have to travel cross country this weekend, one of the few times they and their crewmembers can sleep in their own beds, or at least close to it. Alex Job and his Ruby Tuesday Championship Racing Team calls Tavares, Fla. home. Two years ago, Job’s No. 23 Porsche Crawford team of comprised of Patrick Long and Mike Rockenfeller won the GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami.

 

This season, he hopes his new co-drivers Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand can give the team another win. Auberlen was part of the winning team last season, when he and co-driver Matt Alhadeff graced Gatorade Victory Lane after starting the No. 05 Sigalsport BMW Riley 15th on the grid.

 

“After nearly two months, the team is really looking forward to getting back to the track,” Job said. “We had a great run at Daytona and I am excited about what Bill and Joey can do in this race car. They have such good chemistry together that I think we are going to be tough to beat this year.”

 

SAMAX also has a strong history at the track, and team owner Peter Baron hopes the same holds true at the track this weekend. Tabbed “Team Florida” unofficially, Baron’s No. 2 BMW Riley is housed in Pompano Beach and will be piloted by two Florida drivers – Orlando’s Ryan Dalziel and Henri Zogaib. Even sponsors Cigarette Racing Team and The Miami Garage are Miami-based.

 

On the GT side, South Florida based teams include SpeedSource, Safina Racing with Mitchum Motorsports and Alegra Motorsports.