Qualifying Quotes from the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg
Kevin Estre // #9 K-PAX Racing with Flying Lizard Motorsports McLaren 650S GT3
Qualified 2nd // Best Time of 1:23.956
Qualifying went pretty well. There was a lot of water on track and I managed to do a good lap on my second lap. Then I improved in my fourth lap, but I got traffic in the last corner so it could have been a bit better. It was a bit hard for pole I think, Ryan did a great lap. We’ve got a good car in the wet as we saw in COTA, and we are fighting against the four wheel drive in the wet so that definitely has a bit of an advantage against us. We’ve got a good race car and we will see what happens tomorrow.
Ryan Dalziel // #31 EFFORT Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R
Qualified 3rd // Best time: 1:24.934
Good qualifying, we definitely felt after COTA we had a decent car in the wet. We had difficult conditions that we didn’t get the most out of the car in the early laps and then it got a little bit wetter. Got a good clear lap put one in the bank and good enough for P3. I think the Acura and McLaren times are achievable, but we just didn’t get the clear track when we needed it. It’s a good place to start on the inside second row and hopefully we can get a good start and go for the race win.
Robert Thorne // #6 K-PAX Racing with Flying Lizard Motorsports McLaren 650S GT3
Qualified 5th // Best Time of 1:25.429
Qualifying went pretty well without a lot of track time on the car. I wasn’t sure how far I needed to push right off the bat and being back in traffic it kind of gave me the time to get up to speed. I eventually got a clean lap and was able to put the car on the third row which I was happy with and the car is clean. Kevin did an amazing lap out there, as always really fast in the rain. The McLaren’s are going to be looking good for the start of this race, we’re both at the front and if we can get our launch nice then it might be a good race.
Michael Lewis // #41 EFFORT Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R
Qualified 15th overall, 3rd in GTA // Best time: 1:27.567
The rain conditions were pretty intense out there, but the Porsche 911 had some really good grip on the braking. It was all about avoiding the painted lines all over the runway into Turn 1 and along some of the back parts of the track and just in general I tried to survive the session. The Porsche was good everywhere and we will look at some data to see if we can extract some time here and there. Overall I feel quite confident. The team was really good at preparing myself for this situation because the weather was ever changing, we didn’t know if it was going to be wet or not so I really appreciated their contributions in making sure I was prepared for what was to come. The car was solid, and we are rolling off in third in the GTA. That’s good for those points and we will just try to pick off the drivers whether it’s wet or dry tomorrow.
Darren Law // Program Manager // K-PAX Racing with Flying Lizard Motorsports
I’m really happy with where we ended up in qualifying. We have both cars in the top five. Both drivers did an excellent job in the wet. The cars, as we know, are very good in those conditions. We’re looking forward to the race tomorrow and are happy with how the weekend is going so far. I’m really proud of the whole K-PAX Racing with Flying Lizard Motorsports group. All the crew guys have been working hard on these cars to make sure things have been working great every session.
