Grand American Rolex

Pruett and the No. 01 machine finished in third place, just 4.270 seconds behind race-winner Ryan Dalziel. It was the lowest finish of the season for the teammates, who won three of the season's first four races and came home second in the other.

"We're staying on par with what we wanted to do," said Pruett following the race. "We absolutely would have liked to have finished higher than we did, but we got the most out of the car that we could. The only way I can put it is today we had a good setup but not a great setup, but I think we played up our game a little bit. Our goal for the team, for TELMEX, for Ganassi and especially for Lexus is to finish on the podium every race. As long as we keep doing it, we're achieving our goal."

Pruett was quick to credit the Lexus powerplant as being a major contributor in the team's dominating performance through the first five races of the 14-race championship. He and Rojas hold a comfortable, 19-point lead in the Daytona Prototype driver standings.

"A big piece of it has been Lexus," Pruett said. "They've given us better drivability. We got a rule change in the engine package at the end of last year, which we really didn't get to take advantage of at the end of last season. They worked on it over the winter. They did a lot more work between our first race and our second race. I think that was the turning point for us with the engine program. Then, the guys just continue to do what they do. The Ganassi guys are always sharp. The TELMEX car is always strong. It's a good thing when you're disappointed to finish third."

The second Lexus entry in the RumBum.com 250 was the No. 3 Southard Motorsports Lexus Riley for co-drivers Shane Lewis and Bill Lester. Lewis started the race from ninth place and drove the opening stint before handing the controls over to Lester—a veteran of Toyota's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series program—to finish it out. Lester brought the car home in 12th place.

"It's been unbelievable how much faster this track is than what I recall it was 20-some years ago when I ran it in SCCA amateur racing," said Lester of his Laguna Seca experience. "Once it slowed down from being a video game to something that I could handle, it got better. We got a pretty good setup under the car. It wasn't perfect. Shane did a really good job in his first stint. We had a little bit of a miscue on our pit stop, and that kind of set us back. I did what I could. We had a somewhat damaged car, and then I went off the track with it and that didn't help matters any.

"We've just got to keep in mind that this team is, as far as I'm concerned, new. They've been together for a few years but I'm still a new component to it and we have a new engineer. We're all trying to make sure that we're communicating properly and we're getting everything out of each other that we can. One of the things we haven't done a lot of is testing, and I think we made a decision to try and do a little more of that, so I think we're on the right track. Everybody's got the right attitude. We'll just keep on doing it."

Next up for the Lexus-powered Grand-Am Rolex Series teams is a six-hour extravaganza at the historic Watkins Glen International circuit on Saturday, June 7.