24 HOURS OF DAYTONA Broken suspension ends bid for Stewart

Christian Fittipaldi claims his team's win in the Rolex 24 race was not all luck.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- For a guy known to sometimes do a fast burn when things go wrong on the track, Tony Stewart was surprisingly calm after a very frustrating finish to the Rolex 24 sports car endurance race.
"I did everything I could to help us win this race," Stewart said Sunday. A broken suspension part ended his bid to put himself, fellow Nextel Cup driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and road racing specialist Andy Wallace in Victory Lane at Daytona International Speedway.
Instead, it was defending Grand American prototype champion Terry Borcheller, Andy Pilgrim, Christian Fittipaldi and team owner Forest Barber popping the victory champagne.
They wound up on top when the broken piece nearly sent Stewart careening into the wall 20 minutes from the end of the twice-around-the-clock race.
Not all luck
Fittipaldi, who has raced in Formula One, CART and NASCAR, insisted the win was not all luck. He pointed out that the winning team's Pontiac-powered Doran prototype was forced to run a slower-than-planned pace for most of the event because the engine was overheating.
"But we were always running first, second or third and, in my opinion, the competition was lucky we were running a slower pace than what we could have been," Fittipaldi said.
Stewart was at the wheel of the dominating Chevrolet-powered Crawford when the left rear tire pulled off the rim and sent the 2002 Winston Cup champion spinning to a stop on the backstretch.
Pilgrim drove into the lead five minutes later, passing the stopped Crawford prototype as the frustrated Stewart unhooked his belts, scrambled out of the cockpit and sadly inspected the damage.
Pilgrim then gave up the driver's seat to Barber to make the last lap and take the checkered flag on the 3.56-mile circuit that includes about three-quarters of the 2 1/2-mile oval that will be used in the Daytona 500 in two weeks.
Unscheduled stops
Stewart made three unscheduled tire stops in the final 90 minutes, but the sleek orange and blue Crawford still had white smoke boiling from the under-body as he raced around the course with less than half an hour to go.
To make matters worse, the rain that forced a nearly three-hour race stoppage Sunday morning, began falling again with about 50 minutes remaining.
Team owner Max Crawford was impressed by his NASCAR drivers.
"Yeah, I think Tony probably has a future in sports car and I think Dale might have surprised himself how good a road racer he is, too."
The winners covered 526 laps and 1,872.56 miles, finishing three laps ahead of the runner-up, a Porsche GT3RS co-driven by Johnny Mowlem, Mike Fitzgerald, Joe and Jay Policastro and Robin Lidell.
They barely held off the GT3 Cup car of Johannes van Overbeek, Seth Neiman, Lonnie Pechnik, Peter Cunningham and Mike Rockenfeller to win the GT class by 6.97 seconds.