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| The Preferred Line - Grand-Am GT Tuesday |
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The best the defending championship Pontiac GXP could do was 15th - Jim Bourn Photo
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The top two finishing cars in the 2008 Grand-Am GT Championship, the Pontiac GXP.Rs of Paul Edwards and Kelly Collins (#07 Banner Racing Pontiac GXP.R) and the Stevenson GXP.R of Robin Liddell and Andrew Davis, were a bit behind the 8-ball during qualifying for the Rolex 24 as the profile of the sedan based GXP finds itself at a disadvantage on the generous curved but flat out portions of Daytona International Raceway.
The smaller and lower profile pushed through the air around the Daytona oval by the huge field of Porsches as well as the Mazda RX-8s create a significant to advantage to those cars while the GXPs struggle to keep up.
That (qualifying) was about what we expected, said Leighton Reese owner of the defending championship #07 Pontiac GXP.R. Grand-Am works hard to make differing cars as equal as possible but unfortunately for us that doesn't work out well for us at Daytona. Particularly for one lap of qualifying. Actually we went faster today than we ever have on this track so we are encouraged by that.
But neither the Banner nor the Stevenson teams are complaining all that bitterly and actually both teams feel that they actually compete against the stellar field of cars and drivers fielded for this year's 24 hour in the long run.
We got what we expected out of qualifying, said Andrew Davis driver of the #57 Stevenson Pontiac GXP.R. This is a race that is more about being able to put in consistent laps and with our team and drivers we will see how things shake out when we get to the 20th hour.
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