LOOKING AT THE VARIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CARS IN GTD PRO, WHERE IS THE STIFFEST COMPETITION?“The Porsche got a pretty big change for Sebring, and they were obviously super-fast. In Practice One, the GTD car was fastest overall and the 9 car never really showed speed until when it needed to. So I feel like they’ve got some stuff in-hand to show when they need to. The Mercedes was strong all year last year, so I’m sure they’ll be strong now that they have two proper pros in the car for the sprint races. When you look at Sebring and Daytona, a lot of different cars were competitive so our eyes are on everybody at this point.” THE GTD AND GTD PRO CARS ARE MIXED A LOT ON-TRACK. HOW DOES THAT IMPACT YOUR FOCUS AND STRATEGY?“Not everyone is like Bill (Auberlen, a pro driver) in that class. Most of the guys don’t move out of the way that nicely. It’s the same thing Bill said – if there’s a guy in between you and someone you’re battling against, you’re going to fight that guy pretty hard just to have that buffer in-hand. We saw at the end of the Rolex 24 where there was GTD PRO, then GTD, then GTD PRO again. That kind of separates the race especially on those last restarts where it’s going to be difficult to see a proper battle in your own class. At the end of Sebring, we got hit by a GTD car going into Turn Seven on the last restart and put us out of contention. It’s difficult when you put everyone in the same situation without a class split, but it’s just the way things are right now.” PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCES IN BEING OVERTAKEN BY GTP CARS THIS YEAR VERSUS DPI CARS A YEAR AGO?“It’s much different. The way they make speed seems different. They come by you a bit quicker on the straights and then their cornering speeds – especially in the medium-speed corners – is quite a bit lower than back in the DPi days. At Sebring, I had a BMW come by me and it must have been on a double-stint on the tires. It passed me into 15 and was so slow at apex that I was actually able to drive back around him. It’s a much different car, it seems, for them to learn and adapt to. It makes the style of racing a bit different because now in GT, we know that they struggle on second-stint tires and it will put us in a position to probably want to be a little more defensive in those sorts of spots to not lose laptime when they go by us. It’s definitely a learning process. They come by you a lot quicker in the straights like at Daytona before the Kink and out of the Kink. They’d arrive much quicker and when you wouldn’t expect it from years past in a DPi. When we go to different tracks, it’s going to be learning where those places are, and where they can get by us and where they can’t compared to what it was like back in DPi.” AFTER YOUR CUP PERFORMANCE AT COTA AND THINKING ABOUT A STREET RACE FOR CUP GUYS AT CHICAGO, HOW MANY TRIES WILL IT TAKE FOR THEM TO GET A CHECKERED FLAG?“If it’s anything like COTA, they won’t have much green-flag running! When I got out of the car, Ricky (Taylor) was the first person I saw, and I was like, ‘Holy cow. That was ridiculous, what that was like on those last restarts just getting beaten around.’ I was glad to see that at least everyone else had same opinion, even in the paddock, saying that it was an especially aggressive finish to the race. I think it was a bit of wake-up call for a lot of the regulars to start thinking about it. Having those guys never been to a street course race and how strong those cars are, I think they’re going to be bouncing off the walls and probably doing more damage to the barriers than the cars themselves.” WITH THE NEW GTP CARS A BIT BIGGER AND BEING SLOWER THROUGH THE CORNERS, DO YOU ANTICIPATE HAVING BEING A LITTLE MORE AGGRESSIVE IN TAKING THE LINE AWAY BEFORE YOU GET TO A CORNER?“I think so. We saw at Sebring that if you got passed in the wrong spot, you’d lose quite a bit of time. At Long Beach, especially, if they get by you at Turn One and they can’t really get away from you all the way through Four or Five, it could be a pretty big loss. I’m sure you’ll see guys getting pretty aggressive. Now there are also a lot of new drivers in GTP that are young and hungry to show what they can do. At Sebring and Daytona, some of those guys would come by you and were pretty aggressive even in endurance races and taking a line away from GT cars kind of unknowingly. We need to be a little more proactive in showing some of those guys our intentions as well entering the corner. For sure, I think you’ll see a lot of the guys near the front of the GT pack being especially aggressive, especially late in the runs, when those guys are on used tires.” |