Patrick Long, who will drive with longtime teammate Jörg Bergmeister in the #45 Flying Lizard Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 RSR for the full 2010 season, will start from pole in tomorrow’s Mobil One 12 Hours of Sebring, after the BMW which went quickest during qualifying failed the stall test during post-qualifying inspection. Long and Bergmeister, 2009 ALMS GT2 Driver’s Champions, will be joined by longtime Porsche factory driver Marc Lieb for this year’s race.
Patrick said, “It’s been even busier than normal this year at Sebring, it seems. Between driver’s meetings, engineering meetings, pitstop practice, autograph sessions, driver pitstop challenges and then just the driving on track, it’s been hectic!”
“We’ve had a trying week getting the car to handle, and dealing with the new updates to the car from Porsche. It’s taken time to find a balance between having a high-performance car and a car that’s manageable over the bumps here. Up until the last session prior to qualifying, we were still making massive changes to our setup, and we were happy with P2 in qualifying. Even though we were a few tenths off of BMW’s initial pole time. We thought it was strange that the BMW that set the pole was so much quicker than its sister car, and faster than they’d been all week, and our suspicions turned out to be true when they failed the post-qualifying stall test.”
“We’re hopeful for tomorrow, but it’ll be a challenge just to be in the top five. It’s more competitive in GT2 than it’s ever been! With that extra competition, it’s created more focus and aggression both for the team and for us as drivers, so we’re feeling positive. It’s supposed to be warm for the race which makes it physically tough, but Marc, Jörg and I are ready, as is the team.”
The 2010 Mobil One 12 Hours of Sebring will be broadcast live, Saturday March 20 at 10am ET in HD, on SPEED.
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Photos © Rick Dole 2010