Spirit of Daytona Racing takes 6th in Brickyard Grand Prix

INDIANAPOLIS (26 July 2013) - Despite leading the race early and running in podium position late in the race, the 2013 Brickyard Grand Prix didn’t bring Spirit of Daytona Racing the result the team had worked for.

The No. 90 VISITFLORIDA.com Corvette DP of Richard Westbrook and Ricky Taylor finished the Brickyard Grand Prix in sixth place on Friday. The race opened under perfectly sunny, Florida-like conditions as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway offered much improved weather over the 2012 debut edition of the race.

After a challenging qualifying session on Thursday that saw the team uncharacteristically struggling for pace, Taylor started the race from eighth on the grid. The youngster made an electric start to leap up the order early in the race, moving into the lead on Lap 17.

Good pit work saw the team improving each time the No. 90 VISITFLORIDA.com Corvette DP came in for service, with Westbrook taking over the controls to run the closing stages of the race. The Englishman moved up to run in third with just over 30 laps to go, but the long green flag run to the finish did not favor the Spirit of Daytona entry. Westbrook fought hard and held strong to bring the Corvette DP home in sixth.

“We’ve been really strong coming off the truck this year, but this was an event that we weren’t,” said team owner Troy Flis. “It just turned out to be an off weekend for us. To come away with sixth—we’ll take it and move on. I think the guys did a great job on pit row—we made up ground every stop. These low grip tracks have been a struggle for us, so we need to go test and get better at that for sure. All I can say is I’m happy. Ricky did a great job, from being in P9 with a horrible car in qualifying, he did a great job driving the car up to the front and did just an excellent job all day. We just didn’t have the racecar, so we’ll just go and get them next weekend.”

"Coming off of Watkins Glen and being the fastest car, we were optimistic coming into this race, but we missed it on the setup, we just didn't get it right,” said Westbrook. “We rolled off badly but we have come away with some decent points. We have produced a really quick race car in many races this year and we were the fastest car at Watkins Glen, so we need to get back to that. Up next is Road America, which is a really great track for us—it was great last year. So we will take these points and move on."

“As a team, we overcame a lot this weekend,” said Taylor. “We really struggled a lot in practice, and yesterday we had a 10th or ninth place race car. Today we had great pit stops. Mike (Bobbit, engineer) made some great improvements to the car, but at the end of the day, I don’t think we had enough track time to really work on it and get there. It was a good weekend for Mike and the rest of the team—Richard and I were just complaining all the time! I think the team did a very good job. We passed people on every pit stop, and it’s only a matter of time before we get a win. We’ll go on to the next one and we’ll pick up right where we left off—we’ll have speed.”

Spirit of Daytona Racing looks forward to the next Rolex Series race in its “home away from home” event at the VISITFLORIDA.com Sports Car 250 from Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. The team hopes for a repeat of last year’s results on the famous American road course—a victory.

Spirit of Daytona Racing