Long Beach Grand Prix, Pirelli World Challenge Pre-Qualifying Quotes
Kevin Estre // #9 K-PAX Racing with Flying Lizard Motorsports McLaren 650S GT3
Practice // Placed P5 // Best Time of 1:20.669
This is my first time in Long Beach and I really appreciate the track. The layout is fantastic and I like the feel is. Some cool, fast corners, good braking. Everything is fine. Our car is quite good. We did some set up changes during the session, which went in the right direction. In terms of lap times, we’re pretty happy. We just have to see when we put the new tires compared to the others, but we’re pretty happy with the balance. We have to work a little bit for qualifying, but we’re headed in the right direction.
Robert Thorne// #6 K-PAX Racing with Flying Lizard Motorsports McLaren 650S GT3
Practice // Placed P4 // Best Time of 1:30.571
We had a great start to our weekend here. Glad to have the first and only practice for the weekend here out of the way. We really showed up with the right set up on the car. We have some small tweaks heading into qualifying tomorrow and get things a little quicker and a little more sorted. We should be fast, and everyone here is in good spirits and looking forward to the race on Sunday.
Ryan Dalziel // #31 EFFORT Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R
Practice // Placed P7 // Best Time of 1:20.839
We had a pretty good start today. We’re fairly confident of the Porsche on the street course. In Race 2 at St. Petersburg, we had a pretty good car. We came here with that car and it seems pretty good. A lot of guys put on new tires towards the end of the session, so I think had we actually done a qualifying stint, we would have been in the top three. I’m looking forward to qualifying. This is a short, compressed weekend on track time, so that will probably be good for us. The EFFORT Racing Porsche feels good to drive and this is actually my first time here in a GT car, so that was a little different for me. It’s a lot of fun and good to be here at long beach and hopefully start up front.
Michael Lewis // #41 EFFORT Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R
Practice // Placed P11 (P2 in Class) // Best time of 1:20.994
This is my home Grand Prix. The first free practice was good, we ended up second in class, so we’re right there battling and trying to get those points for the race. The car handled really well. It’s a street circuit and I’ve never been here. I was a little bit nervous going into it, with all this anticipation, but the moment I turned on the engine to roll on the street course, it felt like home. Just managing the braking zones into turn one, turn six and the last sector will be my focus. Just wanted to get those down, I did that, and rolled through the rest of the track. My engineer was giving me updates on how I was doing, and the communication was really good. We made some good tweaks to the car and qualifying should be really tight. I’m just going to really study tonight and get those brake zones down to get really deep in there. We’ll see what happens.
