Bryan Sellers is off to the races
in Daytona
Young Sports Car Ace to
Launches New Year with Grand-Am Rolex 24 & CTSCC Events
It will be "off to the races"
for Bryan Sellers in 2012. Beginning with dual events at Daytona
International Speedway (DIS), the Braselton, Ga.-resident promises to
have one of his busiest seasons to date. Friday, January 27 Sellers
will launch into the new year with the two-hour, 30-minute Continental
Tire Sports Car Challenge (CTSCC) driving the No. 46 BCKSTGR/Fall-Line
BMW M3 Coupe in the GS class of the BMW Performance 200. The following
day, he'll run his first endurance race of 2012 taking the No. 17
FOAMETIX/Burtin Racing with Goldcrest Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 Cup
into battle in the 50th Anniversary of the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
Competition in the Rolex 24 promises to be brutal with top drivers from
all over the world making-up the 46-car GT class field - overall, 60
cars form the grid of the twice-around-the-clock event. Sellers joins
past Rolex 24-winner Jack Baldwin (Marietta, Ga.), team owner Claudio
Burtin (Marietta, Ga.), Sebastian Asch (Germany) and Martin Ragginger
(Stuttgart, Germany) in the No. 17 - one of 24 Porsches entered. The
quintet had impressive results in pre-season testing at DIS. In the
January 6-8 "Roar Before the Rolex 24", the FOAMETIX/Burtin Porsche set
the second quickest time in two sessions. Their best lap - a one
minute, 49.629 second lap of the 3.56-mile, 12-turn speedway road
course - came in the third of eight sessions. Expectations are high for
the race as car preparation was put at a premium over speed in the
test.
Beginning with Daytona, Sellers
will compete in the majority of the CTSCC events with Fall-Line in
attempt to capture the team and co-driver Mark Boden (Winnetka, Ill.)
championships. However, prior motorsports commitments will force him to
miss at least one event minimizing his personal chances for a title. At
the "Roar Before the Rolex 24", Sellers was among the quickest for the
three-day test setting the car's fastest time (1:57.476) in the fourth
session. The BMW Performance 200 will take the green flag at 1:30 p.m.
(ET) on Friday.
2011 was a landmark year for
Sellers. He finished second in the Rolex 24 At Daytona GT class driving
for Paul Miller Racing and won two American Le Mans Series presented by
Tequila Patrón (ALMS) GT class races in the Team Falken Tire
Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (Mid-Ohio and Baltimore). In addition, he ran a
number of races for Kinetic Motorsports in CTSCC driving a BMW M3. All
told, Sellers was the highest finishing American, third, in the
prestigious world ranking of drivers in the Porsche Cup.
Sellers will open his third
championship of 2012 on March 17 at the 60th Annual Mobil 1 Twelve
Hours of Sebring driving for Team Falken Tire in the ALMS.
SPEED will broadcast the 50th
Rolex 24 live. Coverage begins with an hour-long pre-race show at 2:30
p.m. (ET) on Saturday, January 28. SPEED will continue live from the
green flag at 3:30 p.m. through the first seven-and-a-half hours
(3:30-11 p.m.). The live coverage will resume at 9 a.m., Sunday, Jan.
29 until 4 p.m. post-race. The nighttime hours will be webcast on
www.SPEED.com.
Quotes
Bryan Sellers:
About the Rolex 24 weekend:"I
love starting the year at Daytona! There is always a great amount of
competition in both the Rolex 24 and the Challenge races and it really
causes you to start the year at a high level. This weekend makes sure
you have left no stone unturned in your preparation. It will be a very
busy year and I hope to start it off right!
Winning at Daytona in any year would be
special in its own right. However, this year, everyone has pulled-out
the stops for the 50th Anniversary so winning it on such an occasion
would be indescribable!"
About what pre-season testing
can reveal:"The test is a great chance to evaluate where you are as a
program. It is always very difficult to estimate your overall
performance against the competition during testing so you have to focus
more on making sure you are prepared. Everybody will improve from the
test and I expect it to be an extremely challenging weekend in both
races."
About the benefits of driving
in both the Rolex 24 and the BMW Performance 200: "Fortunately, with
running two cars you get double the track time during practice. With
the weekend being so abbreviated and having so many drivers, it does
help to drive in both races. Not only does it help me as a driver, it
helps the teams as I have double the information I can draw from."
About past Daytona successes:
"Daytona has been very good to me in the past and I hope it continues
to be. I think that Daytona is a place you learn to adapt to; it
doesn't really fit any style because it is such a different track. It
really demands a lot of a driver over the course of the weekend. I love
racing this event!"
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