With a racing festival and the traditional fireworks display, the Daytona International Speedway celebrates America’s Independence Day on 4th of July. Two highlights await the 250,000 fans expected to attend the Independence Day celebrations in Florida’s giant motorsport arena – the Coke Zero 400, a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, and the Brumos Porsche 250, which kicks off the second half of the Grand-Am Series. In the US Mecca of sports car racing, Porsche already made a sensational start to the season early this year: David Donohue (USA) and Darren Law (USA) won the 24 hour classic here in January in a Porsche Riley.

Porsche’s chances to win the second Grand-Am race on the 5.73 kilometre Speedway on the East Coast of the Sunshine State have marginally increased through another change to the regulations several days ago. After the engine revs of the Porsche Riley were reduced by 300 rpm following the successful start to the season, the Porsche engine could not fully utilise its potential in the following races. Now, the Porsche is again permitted top revs of 9,200 rpm for the 520 hp boxer engines.

“Now we’re back to the status we were at with the Porsche engines in January,” said Porsche’s head of motorsport, Hartmut Kristen, who has no tolerance for the three regulation changes that handicapped the Porsche Riley between the races in Daytona and Watkins Glen. “It was mainly the change from a six speed to a fifth speed gearbox and back again – these zig-zag decisions of the sporting authority were very hard to understand. For our teams, Brumos and Penske, this made it very hard to work on the performance of the vehicles in a focused and lineal way.”

Nevertheless, Porsche’s factory pilots Timo Bernhard (Germany) and Romain Dumas (France) have regularly achieved top placings with Penske Racing, and even managed a podium result with third in both Millville and Watkins Glen. Their chances to win the title are still alive. In the championship the duo lies just 13 points behind the leaders. Considering that victory yields 35 points, Hartmut Kristen thinks, “the situation certainly shows promise.” Directly behind the pair are Daytona winners David Donohue and Darren Law.

In Daytona, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas take up the race in the #12 Porsche Riley for Penske Racing. The two Daytona Prototypes fielded by Brumos Racing, the successful customer team from Jacksonville/Florida and title sponsor of the race, are manned by David Donohue and Darren Law (number 58) as well as Joao Barbosa (Portugal) and JC France (USA), who secured their best result at the Daytona 24 hour event in January. Competing at the wheel of the #59 vehicle recently at Mid-Ohio, the two saw the flag directly behind the Penske Porsche which further improved their position in the overall standings.

Now halfway through the season, the situation in the GT class looks extremely positive for Porsche. With the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup of Farnbacher Loles Racing, Dirk Werner (Germany) and Leh Keen (USA) have already secured wins at Millville, Watkins Glen and Mid-Ohio and thanks to these hard-fought successes they now hold the points’ lead in the drivers’ championship. Works drivers Joerg Bergmeister (Germany) and Patrick Long (USA) netted another victory for Porsche at the Daytona 24 hour race. These victories make Porsche the most successful manufacturer. Just how well Porsche is performing in this customer racing segment has been underlined by Spencer Pumpelly (USA) with the 911 GT3 Cup of the TRG team with second places from Daytona and Millville as well as the performance of Farnbacher Loles pilot Eric Lux (USA), who came third (with Porsche works driver Wolf Henzler) in Millville and Watkins Glen.

These successes, however, did not come easily to the Porsche drivers. “The control tyres, which should have ensured equality of chances for all drivers in this class, did not always have the same level of quality unfortunately,” Hartmut Kristen criticised. Despite the points’ advantage of Dirk Werner and Leh Keen, he still feels the race for the title is wide open: “We are sure to witness some more exciting racing in this championship.”

The race in Daytona takes off on Saturday, 4th July, at 14.00 hours local time (20.00 hours CEST) and runs over 250 miles.

Source : Porsche