Last season the Wayne Taylor Racing team left Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca leading the Rolex Series points after a second consecutive win as the season – and the series – headed to a denouement. This season the team arrive at the track for the fourth round of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship seeking a first win of the year.
The team have had a strong start to the 2014 season with second places at both the Rolex 24 at Daytona and in the most recent race on the streets of Long Beach, where drivers Ricky and Jordan Taylor began the team’s relationship with Konica Minolta by narrowly losing out in the battle for the lead.
Headed by Wayne Taylor – Ricky and Jordan’s father – they will take on the two hour at Laguna Seca with their Chevrolet Corvette DP. The Prototype class again sharing track time with the GT Le Mans class as the California track hosts two separate races across Sunday May 4.
“I’m not sure, yet, how our strategy will look but, with it being a little shorter than our traditional distance, it makes it that much more of a sprint race,” explains Jordan. “That means we’ll be racing hard for all two hours. Our team, historically, seems to do well in these shorter-distance races. We won a few last year.”
While the younger Taylor brother was part of the winning team in 2013 Ricky Taylor is still searching for his first win at the track, but to do so he and Jordan will have to battle the strong line-ups of Action Express Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing – victors already this season – as well as the LMP2 teams on the other side of divide in the TUDOR Championship’s premier class.
He looks ahead to the weekend’s racing “I expect the P2 cars to be pretty quick there, so we will have to really be on our game, especially if they manage to get track position on us. I think it will be intense racing but very respectful between classes as it was very nice racing with the GTLM class at Long Beach.”
“This year is a whole new year,” said Wayne Taylor. “With all the significant changes to our cars with the new TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, we’re really not going to know how well our package will take to the track at Laguna Seca this time around until we practice Saturday morning. We were strong at the Daytona 24-hour and also at Long Beach and we weren’t too far off at Sebring. I’ve always enjoyed coming to Laguna Seca and it’s definitely a driver’s circuit. I just hope Ricky and Jordan can continue the momentum they started together with their second-place finish at Long Beach and perhaps bring our new sponsor Konica Minolta its first win this weekend. That would be absolutely fantastic.”
