Ed Brown, at 51, doing the double at COTA
ESM's Ed Brown isn't letting his age slow him down this weekend.
Ed Brown
Richard Sloop
Ed Brown, CEO of Patron and driver for Extreme Speed Motorsports, will be doing double duty at Circuit of the Americas on Saturday, September 20th.
In the afternoon there will be a 2 hour 45 minute race for the Tudor United SportsCar Championship and in the evening there will be a six hour race for the World Endurance Championship. Brown will be the only driver driving a prototype car in both races on Saturday, which will be a difficult challenge for him given the differences between the two cars.
The TUSC car is on Continental tires while the WEC car is running on Dunlop tires. The tire brands have different characteristics, which makes driving the car very challenging around the around the 3.425 mile circuit, as Brown explains.
From a braking standpoint there’s not a tremendous amount of difference
Ed Brown comparing WEC to TUDOR
“I’ve ran the Continentals all year so I’m pretty familiar with that. We were back here two weeks ago in a test with the Dunlops so I’m familiar with them but there’s such a huge difference between what the tire will do, yeah that’ll be my biggest issue of just remembering what car I’ve got underneath me at any particular time and then the practice sessions are right back-to-back-back with each other so it’ll be interesting,” Brown told Motorsport.com.
As for the differences on track, Brown was very up front about how the tires handle differently.
“From a braking standpoint there’s not a tremendous amount of difference, the Dunlops are better in braking, actually it wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, but it’s the mid-corner speed and the grip that we have at mid corner and coming off the corner is far greater than we have on the Continental tires so that’s where I’ll have to just judge where I’m playing with the brake pressure and also the throttle coming off the corner,” Brown said.
That’s going to be pretty interesting. I think Ed will be fine
ESM's Robin Hill
ESM Director of Operations Robin Hill was complimentary of Brown and how he thinks Brown will handle the change of car.
“That’s going to be pretty interesting. I think Ed will be fine, the biggest difference that I think he’s going to have to overcome is switching from Continentals to Dunlops and getting the mindset in his head ‘Oh I’m back on Continentals now,’ and just adapting his driving style accordingly. It’s not going to be easy for him for sure, but he’s game for it, we’ve talked about it and he’s really focused on it so hopefully it all comes out,” Hill said.
Brown battling the flu
The challenge is greater for Brown than previously expected since he’s on the last part of a battle with the flu.
“I’m worried this weekend because I’m sick, I had the flu and I’m worried about that. I’ll jump out into the WEC car today [Thursday] and then I’ll jump into the TUSC car today, and then I’ll jump into the TUSC for one more little short stint tomorrow and I’ll be done with the TUSC car until I start it. The WEC car, I’ll drive at night because it’s mandatory a little bit and I think I’m on schedule to drive the WEC car maybe one session tomorrow and then I won’t get in until the race time,” Brown said.
Brown will be able to rest a little bit between the races since there is a two hour window between the end of the TUSC race and the start of the WEC race, plus the stints in the races between his own.
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