Kanaan, Hunter-Reay, Viso Out Of Rolex 24

2004 IndyCar Series champion Tony Kanaan had been looking forward to making his Rolex 24 Daytona Prototype debut in the Starworks Motorsports-run Riley-Ford this weekend, but as the Brazilian revealed on Tuesday afternoon–just 36 hours before the start of practice–the team's sponsor had disappeared.

"Guys, unfortunately I will not race at the Daytona 24H this Saturday," Kanaan wrote via Twitter. "The funding that the Starworks Motorsports team had went away…"

Kanaan was set to share the car with fellow IndyCar drivers Ryan Hunter-Reay and EJ Viso, and Starworks owner Peter Baron told SPEED.com he held out hope to run the trio of open-wheelers until the last minute.

"The funding was supposed to come through for that, we we're waiting for as long as possible and holding out hope, but it all fell through at the last moment and we can't funds things out of our own pocket," he said.

Like Kanaan, his IndyCar teammates also expressed their disappointment at having to skip Daytona.

"We had a sponsor who wanted to make this happen, and had me and Tony [Kanaan] and [Ryan] Hunter-Reay all fired up to go with Starworks, but then the guy backed out," said Viso. "I'm sad, Tony's sad, Ryan's sad. We had a great team, but this kind of stuff happens."

"This is really a bummer," said Hunter-Reay. "The Rolex 24 has really become like a tradition for me; this will be the first one I've missed since 2006." SpeedTV.com