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Veteran sportscar star Mike Rockenfeller and his teenaged team-mate Tijmen van der Helm steered the 963 to seventh within the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s fourth spherical, having been pressured to overlook the opening three races as a result of provide chain points that delayed the construct of Porsche’s buyer chassis.
Rockenfeller completed the race immediately behind the Daytona 24 Hours-winning Meyer Shank Racing Acura and the primary of the BMW Hybrid V8s within the 102-lap race. The workforce solely acquired its automobile shortly earlier than the Laguna race weekend, following a shakedown at Porsche Motorsport’s Weissach check monitor by manufacturing unit driver Matt Campbell.
“For the very first time in a automobile like this, I believe we did fairly good,” Rockenfeller instructed Motorsport.com. “The automobile was difficult to drive, all people was battling grip, however we confirmed up with zero expertise!
“We all know we’re lacking final tempo and, for me, that’s a stability problem and understanding the braking – I didn’t really feel in management 100%. P7 is rarely what you need, you wish to combat for the rostrum, however let’s be trustworthy, we completed the race with no scratches on the automobile and we get into plenty of fights on the market with our opponents.
“It appeared that we struggled on the brand new tire firstly of the stint, and in direction of the tip I might handle the automobile higher, despite the fact that it wasn’t simple with the brake bias. There are like 500 changes in these automobiles and also you want a half-decent routine!
“However, all in all, I believe we did a half-decent race, and we could be proud as JDC. We’re solely a small workforce, so it’s not like we go testing, now we have to study this automobile race by race.”
#5: JDC Miller MotorSports, Porsche 963, GTP: Tijmen van der Helm, Mike Rockenfeller, #60: Meyer Shank Racing W/Curb-Agajanian, Acura ARX-06, GTP: Colin Braun, Tom Blomqvist
Photograph by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images
His co-driver van der Helm, who was making his first begin on the high degree of sportscar racing after piloting LMP2 equipment within the European Le Mans Sequence, each certified and began the automobile earlier than handing over to Rockenfeller.
“It went higher than anticipated,” stated van der Helm. “A lot to study, a lot nonetheless to study. However I believe Mike and I did a fairly good job together with the workforce, and I believe we needs to be glad concerning the job we did this weekend and I believe we will sit up for all the opposite races.
“This was a studying expertise, a form of follow race, and I believe it went effectively sufficient to sit up for Watkins Glen now. Our objective right here was merely to complete, and simply see the place we completed, so I believe we needs to be pleased with P7.
“Now we will spend a while behind the laptop computer, and work on getting our tempo in direction of the opposite automobiles.”
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