Nick Yelloly, co-driver of the #93 Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06 GTP, explained the risk of clipping the walls around the Detroit Street Course.
“I’m looking forward to the race in Detroit (on 31 May),” he told the media, including Motorsport Week, in a pre-event press conference.
“I tend to like street circuits. Last year was IMSA’s first time there with GTP cars — it was very bumpy, difficult to pass.
“Also tricky to extract a lap time, mainly due to the bumps.
“Very, very narrow as well, so easy to make a mistake and clip a wall and particularly with the cars being relatively long for such a tight and twisty circuit.
“So I enjoyed it last year – I felt comfortable and had solid pace. Looking forward to seeing what we can do.”
During last year’s running of the 100-minute sprint race, one of the incidents involved JDC Miller MotorSports #85 Porsche 963 GTP with Richard Westbrook at the wheel.
Jack Aitken prompted Westbrook’s yellow Porsche to spin and cause a temporary blockage, during which the #85 driver carried out a multi-point turn to continue, which led him to label the downtown Detroit circuit as “not suitable for prototypes“.
Yelloly continued: “Some of the performance engineers have experience from the Wayne Taylor car that won last year.
“Their pace seemed particularly strong in the race, maybe not so much in qualifying, from my recollection.
“I think we had a pretty decent car also in Long Beach, which bodes well, being another street circuit with maybe not the same characteristics completely, but a street circuit is a street circuit.
“So I’m hoping to do a good job with my teammate Renger [van der Zande] and try and get back on that podium.”
READ MORE – Bobby Rahal: BMW–RLL GTP future relationship talk ‘premature’
Discussion about this post