AMERICAN LE MANS ENDURANCE SERIES

GREAT START TO 2005 SEASON

The new GT racing season started for Tim this weekend at Sebring International Raceway in Florida, USA with the classic 53rd Mobil Sebring 12 Hour race on Saturday the 19th March.  This is always a tough race in the Florida heat but as the race came to a close in the darkness the team were able celebrate a magnificent 2nd place, their highest ever placing in the exceptionally competitive American Le Mans Series, of which this race is the first round

Tim was entered to drive a Porsche in the GT2 class for Georgia based J3 racing and would have American drivers Justin Jackson and Nic Jonsson as partners.     Unfortunately Justin was taken ill early in the week and so was unable to race leaving Nic and Tim to split the driving.    Qualifying for grid positions was cancelled as some 3 inches of rain fell on the Thursday so that practice times from the open session on Wednesday were taken for grid slots.   This left the J3 car 10th on the grid in the 18 strong field for the GT2 class despite the fact that Tim had been 6th fastest in the final night practice session for which the rain stopped but left a very wet track surface.

The team had done a late deal to run on Pirelli tyres and so had not been able to test on the rubber until the official sessions for this race.    The rain throughout testing and qualifying meant that the car setup on the new tyres was very much a compromise for the dry conditions that came through for the race.    As the 39 car field got into racing at 10.45 am Tim began to make progress and in stint that lasted a total of 2½ hours was able to move the car up to 6th position.    The race progressed and they moved up to 4th as darkness fell and in the final two hours as others had delays with technical problems that come with such a gruelling race the excellent preparation of the Porsche by the J3 team and the performance of the Pirelli tyres saw them take 2nd place, finishing some 3 laps ahead of the 3rd placed car.