Marshal's SCC qualifying debut at Daytona cancelled out

Daytona Beach, Fla. (24 January 2013) – Michael Marsal will start the BMW Performance 200 from the seventh row on Friday at Daytona International Speedway as the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge opens its 2013 season at the famed World Center of Speed.

#71 Multimatic Motorsports Aston Martin Vantage: Tonis Kasemets, Michael Marsal

Photo by: Jackie Buys

Marsal will start the 2.5-hour race from 14th on the grid behind the wheel of the No. 71 Multimatic Motorsports Aston Martin Vantage before turning the car over to co-driver Tonis Kasemets who will race it to the finish.

Having had several weeks to relish and look forward to the opportunity, Marsal unfortunately saw his first qualifying effort behind wheel of the Aston Martin cut short as the 15-minute qualifying session ended early after a competitor had an on-track incident, cancelling the session after just two laps.

“The two laps of qualifying were a bit of a disappointment,” said Marsal. “I was stuck behind some traffic and on the out lap the tires on this car take a lot more time to come in to temperature than the BMW’s do, so it didn’t come up to temp quite as fast. I came around for my first timed lap and it was a bit disappointing. I got stuck in some traffic and I was about to go through the bus-stop on my second flyer, and things were looking a lot more promising, but unfortunately that lap didn’t play out when the Porsche brought out the black flag.”

It was a busy day of on-track action for Marsal, balancing his time between the Continental Tire and Rolex Series practice sessions as he also prepares for his third Rolex 24 event.

“I’m looking forward to racing again here at Daytona tomorrow,” said Marsal of the Continental Tire race which takes place on Friday ahead of the Saturday’s Rolex 24 event. “I think Multimatic has put together a really fantastic car. It’s going to be fast, and we’re going to be able to make our way back up to the front. We’ll take it easy the first couple of laps—there’s typically a couple of big wrecks, and it’s the first race of the season so I just want to make sure I run clean, quick laps to put us in a good position for Tonis (Kasemets) to take us to the finish.”

Marsal participated in Rolex Series night practice on Thursday ahead of Friday’s final Rolex practice and the 2.5-hour BMW Performance 200 which is set to start at 1:45 PM (ET).

Michael Marsal