Automatic Racing narrowly miss out on front row start at Laguna Seca
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Its been a good progressive start to the proceedings so far for the Florida based Automatic Racing team as they try their luck once again at the 2018 Intercontinental GT Challenge event from the Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca in California this weekend.
With the team's #22 Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 again fielding the same trio of drivers as last year - Charles Espenlaub, Charlie Pittman and Eric Lux, all will be hoping to banish the demons of last year that saw the Stoner Car Care exiting the eight hour race on only the third lap.
Yesterday Free Practice and Pre-Qualifying has seen the team maintain a steady to progressive set of lap times to move into todays three way Qualifying session with good form. With each driver having up to 15 minutes of track time each but all using the same set of Pirelli control tyre it wasn't surprising to see everyones lap times drop off to form a collective time that would then be averaged out between the three drivers.
Espenlaub was the quickest of the three thanks to the fresh rubber but their collective time was just 0.033 of a second off to miss out on a front row start in the GT4 class in tomorrows race - instead they shall start behind the #51 Panoz Avezzano in P1 and the Murillo Racing Mercedes in P2.
Like any endurance race - eight hours is a long time at any circuit!
Good luck to the team.
Photo credits - Intercontinental GT Challenge