Bryan Sellers Ready to Start 2015 TUDOR Season with Daytona Debut - Speedway Digest

A year ago Bryan Sellers sat through one of the hardest 24-hour periods of his career. The Braselton, Georgia-resident and his longtime teammate Wolf Henzler (Germany) watched the pre-season ROAR Before the Rolex 24 and the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona awaiting their then new No. 17 Team Falken Tire Porsche 911 RSR. It would be one race later that the pairing made their debut with a top-five performance in the only-privately entered Porsche 911 RSR in North America. Now, a year later, Sellers will finally have his chance to put the familiar Falken Tire colors onto the even more familiar banking of Daytona International Speedway (DIS) as the 2015 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship gets its start with official testing on January 9-11.

“It’s a pretty amazing experience,” stated Sellers. “Daytona offers many challenges that we have not experienced with the Falken Tire Porsche before. It is pretty eye opening. Daytona is one of the greatest endurance races in the world, pair that with one of the world’s greatest racecars and you have a great experience in the making.”

As the first privateer entrant to race the Porsche 911 RSR, Team Falken Tire’s car did not arrive in time for the 2014 season-opening round here at Daytona. Therefore, Sellers – who is starting his seventh season as a factory driver for the Japanese tire manufacturer in 2015 – had his first chance to test the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class entry on the 3.56-mile, 12-turn race course during testing in December. This weekend’s three-day test will be the first for the team to go head-to-head with the other entries in the intensely competitive and manufacturer-laden class at the oval/infield road course.

“It will be difficult to tell where we really stack up in this test,” Sellers added. “I think everyone will be running through their processes and trying to evaluate their programs. With that being said, all we need to do is be happy with the balance of the Falken Tire Porsche when we leave on Sunday. If we are able to accomplish that, I feel with Porsche’s proven track record at Daytona we will have a competitive race.”

Sellers and Henzler will campaign the full 10-race GTLM schedule on the TUDOR Championship trail. The pairing will be joined by North America’s only Porsche factory driver, Patrick Long (Manhattan Beach, California) at the endurance races and this weekend’s ROAR as the trio prepares for the January 24-25 Rolex 24 At Daytona.

“We learned a significant amount in our previous test here at Daytona,” Sellers commented. “I would say we will look at what we viewed to be our area of greatest weakness and try and improve from there. Hopefully after the test this weekend we will have new areas of both strengths and weaknesses and will be able to expand a little further into maximizing those just before the race.”

The test is also the first officially sanctioned activity for Team Falken Tire and Sellers since their 2014 season-closing victory in the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. That finish continued a four-year run of at least one major race victory for Sellers and the team.

While there will be no television or radio coverage of this weekend’s testing activities, you can visit the official web site of IMSA for timing and scoring of each session beginning with Friday’s first practice session at 8:15 a.m. EST.　

For more on Bryan Sellers, please visit him on the web at www.BryanSellersRacing.com. Follow Bryan on Twitter (www.Twitter.com/BryanSellers) and LIKE him on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/BryanSellersRacing. Tune-in to Bryan’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/BryanSellersRacing.

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Adam Sinclair

NHRA, IHRA, Motocross and other forms of motorsports Staff writer
About Me: Adam has been a race fan since the first time he went through the tunnel under the Daytona International Speedway almost 30 years ago. He has had the privilege of travelling to races all across the state of Florida (as well as one race in Ohio), watching nearly everything with a motor compete for fame and glory, as well as participating in various racing schools to get the feel of what racecar drivers go through every week. Adam has spent the last three years covering motorsports for Examiner.com., where he had the opportunity to see the racing world from behind the scenes as well as the grandstands. He invites everyone to follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, and looks forward to sharing his enthusiasm for all things racing with the readers of SpeedwayDigest.com.Be sure to tune in for his weekly sports talk program, Thursday Night Thunder, where he discusses the latest in motorsports news with drivers, crew members, and fans. The show takes place every Thursday at 8:00 pm EST on the Speedway Digest Radio Network.