2012 Rolex 24 at Daytona winners Michael Shank Racing have completed a successful TUDOR United SportsCar Championship test at the Daytona Speedway.
Restricted to only one day of running because of tyre failures striking to Coyote built Corvettes, the team still completed a strong one day evaluation of the 2014 aero package on it’s Ford EcoBoost-Riley at the hands of John Pew and Ozz Negri.
“The MSR guys were working endless hours to get the car ready for this test. Lots of new stuff – basically from the aerodynamics to the suspension to the engine parts so we had to be very careful how we ran it.
“You don’t want to go out there and just run so we were very cautious and did short runs in the beginning just making sure the engine components were working well and the aero pieces were fine and not dragging on the ground or hitting the ground.
“Once we got the system working, then we started developing the car and that to me was huge. The amount of progress we made in a couple of hours yesterday was tremendous. I was very happy and encouraged yesterday by the way we progressed. I’m very happy with the Ford power.” Stated Negri.
While team boss Michael Shank agrees with IMSA and Continental suspending the second day of the TUDOR Championship test for Prototype and Prototype Challenge cars, they still believe that they have accomplished a lot in the time they had: “I’m not too worried about it, I’m sure they’ll get it worked out. We made giant gains, but it’s not done yet – we need more.
“That’s the biggest problem – that we didn’t get to go another day and we needed it. We’ll keep doing everything we can. I’m really happy where we are with the progression of the motor. It’s a huge task to ask that motor to last 24 hours right out of the box.
The team will be conducting a private test in early December before rejoining with the rest of the TUDOR Championship field at the Roar Before the 24 in early January.
