One Christmas, I tried snowboarding on Big Bear Mountain in Southern California. With great determination, I flung myself down the slope. Each time I started to gain a little speed, I’d have to dive into the snow to avoid running over an over-privileged rugrat. Two days of voluntary horizontal shifting left me so sore I could barely walk for a week. Driving a Daytona Prototype car in the Grand American Rolex Series must be equally frustrating.

Successful racing teams don’t normally change drivers mid-season. A switch usually requires a Ricky Bobby type antic, a messy public encounter between pilot and Hawaiian Tropics model, sickness, injury or death. Team owner Roger Penske’s recent decision to shuffle drivers for his LeMans LP2 Porsche RS Spyder is the exception that proves the rule. In fact, Penske isn’t punishing anyone for anything; he’s merely stacking the deck against his less-well funded competitors.

It's no secret that Porsche's 911 dominates the American Le Mans Series GT2 Class. Given their supremacy, you could almost say that the German marque owns the series, setting performance and reliability standards so high that any car other than a 911 is immediately classified as an hapless underdog. But the lap times they are a changin’. Sure, a Porsche has won a place on the podium at every race so far this season. Yes, they’ve scooped first place at half of those races. But a new breed of competition is finally giving the current 996 GT3 RSR a real run for the money. To review…