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 PENULTIMATE RACE OF 2012 GRAND-AM ROLEX SPORTS CAR SERIES
The penultimate race of the 2012 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series will mark the finale of the professional racing season at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca when the Continental Tire Sports Car Festival sends 10 Daytona Prototypes and 17 Grand Touring cars on a two hour and 45 minute sprint around the 11 turn, 2.23 mile track on Sunday, September 9.
During qualifying, held on Saturday, Richard Westbrook (London, England) drove the #90 Spirit of Daytona Racing Corvette DP to a best lap of 1:21.042 to earn the DP pole position. Westbrook has scored two first-place finishes thus far in the season, at Barber Motorsports Park (Birmingham, Ala.) and Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (Lexington, Ohio), both times starting from pole. It will remain to be seen whether he can make it a three-peat at Laguna Seca, especially with less than half a second separating Westbrook and the cars qualifying second through fourth.
In the GT class, Alessandro Balzan (Rovigo, Italy) not only made his debut in the Rolex Sports Car Series but also on the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca course, making a great first impression by wining the class pole position after a best lap of 1:27.594 in the #63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 458.
'This track is very famous in Europe and people talk about this glamorous track and the Corkscrew a lot so I am very proud to drive here at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,' said Balzan. 'One of my targets for next year is to race in the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series, but it depends on how I do here. If the team is happy with what I do here they will keep me, otherwise they will send me back to Italy like baggage. Racing with the Daytona Prototypes in the field is very different from what I am used to in Europe. I'm presently racing in two championships in Europe. I am leading the points in the European Ferrari Challenge and the other series that I am racing in is the Italian GT Championship. The concepts of these cars are very similar to GRAND-AM and similar to the cars that race at Le Mans.'
Prior to the qualifying session, Andrew Davis (Bogart, Ga.), the 2011 Rolex Sports Car Series winner in the GT class, spoke about his chances of a class win at Laguna Seca. 'So far we're not quite as good as last year, but each session we get better. And although we haven't quite nailed the set up to our liking, we'll continue working on it and make a few changes before qualifying.' Driving the #59 Brumos Racing Porsche, Davis subsequently qualified third with a time of 1:28.240.
Davis was the winner of the 2011 race – having started from pole – and he addressed the performance of Porsche on the Laguna Seca circuit. 'I think the Porsche is good on any circuit, but it is especially good here. The competition is so strong in the Rolex Sports Car Series GT class that I don't think the track favors Porsche and it doesn't look like it's the quickest car here this week. The Ferraris are very fast, the Mazdas are really quick here, but at Brumos Porsche we always have a car that is competitive so we know we can fight for the win. We've been struggling through the middle part of the season. We started the season out okay and had a couple of podium finishes and the Rolex 24 At Daytona went really well for us finishing third so we were really happy with that. Any time you are on the podium at the Rolex 24 it's great. After a few disappointments after the Rolex 24 the gloves came off. We're now just going for the best finish we can do at each race and that is why we're getting better results now because we're going race by race.'
'The majority of GRAND-AM races are sprint races so you kind of have your balance. Strategy may play out a little differently in a two-hour race because neither driver is in the car that much, so you have to think about fuel loads and stuff like that. For this race we'll run our normal strategy and try to run the fuel loads as best we can and make pits stops as short as possible. At the longer races a driver has to pace himself since you're going to be in the car a lot longer.'
Davis is also very excited about the recently announced merger of the GRAND-AM Road Racing and the American Le Mans Series, which will see its first season in 2014. 'I've been a fan of this sport since I was four years old and I love the idea of there being one big series. It's going to be great for the fans and great for sports car racing in North America in general. Obviously there are still a lot of questions to be answered, but if you can get the best of the best in each series and form one big series I can see it can only be a good thing for us.'
The 13th race in the 2012 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series has a 3:00 p.m. PDT start and will be carried live on SPEED TV.
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