Fresh off its first-ever podium finish in last weekend’s FIA World Endurance Championship season opener, 8Star Motorsports heads to Road Atlanta for Saturday’s GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series event with plenty of momentum, as the South Florida-based organization targets another top result, but this time on home soil.
The 2.54-mile, 12-turn road course, home to the world-renowned Petit Le Mans, plays host to the fourth round of the Rolex Series, in a season that has seen encouraging progress for the newly formed team and its No. 3 Corvette DP for drivers Enzo Potolicchio and Stephane Sarrazin.
Following the Rolex 24 at Daytona and recent races at Circuit of The Americas and Barber Motorsports Park, 8Star sits a close 6th in the Daytona Prototype teams’ championship, with its orange-colored Corvette DP finishing inside the top-10 in each of the three races to date. Hopes of a potential breakthrough first victory were dashed in the last outing in Alabama, when Potolicchio was collected in a first-lap incident that took them out of immediate contention of a podium finish.
This time around at Road Atlanta, the 8Star team principal is hoping to have luck back on their sides for the 2-hour and 45-minute event.
“I feel the team is ready for our first win,” Potolicchio said. “We showed a lot of potential at Barber, including being quickest in practice, but a little incident on the first lap set us back. We definitely had the speed in every session and I think we’ll be able to carry it over into this weekend. Road Atlanta is a track that Stephane has had great success at and is really looking forward to. It’s not very much a high-downforce track, so we know the competition will be fast again on the straights but our Corvette DP should be competitive as well. With the driver lineup that we have, we should be in it with a fight.”
Despite being a new venue for the Rolex Series, both Potolicchio and Sarrazin have prior experience of the fast and flowing Georgia circuit. Sarrazin, a former Peugeot factory driver, in fact, has three Petit Le Mans overall victories to his credit (2009-11), and rates Road Atlanta as one of his favorite tracks in North America.
“Neither Stephane nor myself have driven Road Atlanta in a DP before, but we’ll have plenty of track time to get some experience and work on the setup,” Potolicchio added. “Being a key partner of Chevrolet and Pratt & Miller, they’re able to share quite a lot of information and data with us prior to each race, so we can roll off the truck in good shape. We’ll make sure we use the time to the maximum again this weekend.”
Source : 8Star Motorsports