Rolex 24 at Daytona winners Action Express Racing say they are ‘very happy’ after this week’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship winter test at Sebring.
The team, which had a small gearbox issue on the first day of testing, set the fastest time of the two-day test on a 1:52.480 with Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais at the wheel of the No.5 Corvette DP. Overall the trio of Bourdais, Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa managed 112 laps of the 3.74 mile Sebring Track in the Corvette.
Looking back on the test, Team Manager Gary Nelson said: “We came here with a test plan and had a little setback yesterday morning and came right back and got right back on our plan. We ended this morning’s session with a full fuel tank run to simulate race conditions and the traffic was similar to what we think it will be like during the race.
“If the temperatures at the race are like how they were this week, we’re going to have a pretty good notebook of race conditions to fall back on and the drivers’ comments have all been very positive.”
“The car was really good – with the balance and the new aero configuration and everything the car feels really good,” said Bourdais. We just nailed it and got a really good lap and got it done at the end of that session. It was a lot of fun, you could really push, push, push the car. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going and have another great run here.
“We knew last time that we couldn’t run anywhere near enough downforce because there was no way to rebalance it at the front but now with the DP tools to give some downforce that you can actually balance, the car is quite a bit faster so it’s really good fun. When the car has downforce on it, it’s actually really, really fun. I really enjoyed it.”