Extreme Speed Motorsports endured a tough qualifying session at the Rolex 24 at Daytona as the inaugural TUDOR United SportsCar Championship got underway.
Both of the team’s Honda Performance Development ARX-03b LMP2 machines suffered an issue during the 15 minute qualifying session meaning neither car was able to get to full power.
David Brabham took the wheel of the #1 car, while Johannes van Overbeek was dealt driving duties in the sister #2 machine. Overbeek could only manage 15th on the grid, while Brabham had to settle with qualifying down in 18th.
“I never really did a lap, so that was a bit unfortunate,” said Brabham. “That is a shame because we’re further down the grid than where I thought we could have been. The guys are going to figure out why we had that problem in qualifying. We thought everything was fine and then it was fine for about two to three laps. We were building up temperature in the tire, started to go a bit quicker and then I started experiencing problems.
“The good thing is that we’ve had this problem now and not during the race. We need to maximize our track time tonight and tomorrow because there has been very little running so far. Once we have more laps, we’ll have a bit more confidence leading into the race.”
“At the end of the day, where you qualify for the 24-hour race doesn’t make a difference in where you finish,” added van Overbeek. “Where it does make a difference is traffic. My job will be a little harder because we’ll have more traffic to contend with, and what we had anticipated. It is 24 hours and a lot can happen.”
