Uphill battle at Michelin Pilot Challenge opener after this afternoons wet Qualifying

Usually rain is the great equaliser in motorsport but todays rain over the Daytona International Speedway hasn’t had much effect in slowing the more dominating GT4 platforms within the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Series with Qualifying for tomorrows opening race having just finished.

With most of the full season runners in the series also having run at last weekend’s Roar before the 24 test, this week’s continuing dominance of the all-new Porsche 718 GT4 RS (as well as the Ford Mustang GT4) at the head this afternoon’s Qualifying timing screen has left all four Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 crews outside of the top ten going into tomorrow’s four-hour opener.

Running two more Free Practice as well as Qualifying under wet or damp track conditions, the best placed Aston for tomorrow’s race will be the IMSA debuting #27 Automatic Racing AMR of Jon Branam who will start from P12 alongside co-driver Paul Kiebler.

Alan Brynjolfsson is the next of the Aston runners in P17 along with his co-driver Trent Hindman with the new NTE Sport Aston of Manny Franco starting in P18. He will share his #12 car with Romeo Kapudija and Josh Hurley.

Ramin Abdolvahabi suffered the most in the damp with his #09 Stoner Car Care AMR as he and co-driver will start P27 on tomorrows starting grid of forty-eight cars but then a four hour race is always different to Free Practice and Qualifying!

Tomorrows BMW M Endurance Challenge four-hour opener starts at 13:35hrs local

Photo credits - Teams