Flying Lizard Motorsports Daytona January test summary

Flying Lizard Completes Successful Roar Before the 24 Test

#45 Flying Lizard Motorsports with Wright Motorsports Porsche GT3: Jorg Bergmeister, Patrick Long, Seth Neiman, Mike Rockenfeller

Photo by: Eric Gilbert

January 8, 2012 - Daytona Beach, Florida - Flying Lizard leaves Daytona today after a successful test of the No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. Over the three-day test, drivers Joerg Bergmeister (Germany), Patrick Long (USA), Mike Rockenfeller (Germany), and Seth Neiman (USA) took the Porsche through its paces in preparation for the 2012 Rolex 24 At Daytona race, January 28-29.

Driver Perspectives

Patrick Long: "The driver objective for Daytona test days is two-fold: get a balance with the Porsche and get comfortable with the car. By the time we get to race week, we need to have completely sorted through ergomomics issues and be 100 percent with the car. This week, everything came together seamlessly: with Flying Lizard and John Wright's team we worked through all of our objectives."

Long added, "It's a huge GT field this year. I'm confident that the Porsche will be competitive, but of course we won't really know how things stack up until the race. Over the last few days, we stayed focused on our own program; I think we're well on our way to having a solid car that drives well through the entire stint."

Mike Rockenfeller: "It's great to be back at Daytona. It's been a while since I've driven a Cup car so it was important to have the time to get used to it again. We had time this week to try a lot of things on the car. We've still got some work to do to get to race setup, but overall I'm happy with what we accomplished. GT competition is really strong: both internally with all of the other Porsches and the other manufacturers. It's going to be a wild race. We need to have an easy car to drive and find our rhythm early on. I'm happy to be back here and with the Lizards again."

Joerg Bergmeister: "We are still learning the car and the tires but we made a lot of progress over the test. The competition in GT is going to be tough: there are over 20 Porsches alone and a lot of other manufacturers with good cars and lineups. All signs point to GT being even more challenging than the DP class was in 2011."