Saturday morning at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, MICHAEL VALIENTE/No.6 Ford Riley Michael Shank Racing Daytona Prototype was fastest in the Grand-Am Rolex Series practice, with a time of 1:20.547/100.026 mph. His co-driver is JOHN PEW, and they were also fastest in the first Friday practice. TIMO BERNHARD and ROMAIN DUMAS/No.12 Penske Racing Porsche Riley were second fastest Saturday morning, and had been fastest in the second Friday practice.
DANE CAMERON/No.30 Racers Edge Motorsports Mazda RX-8 was the quickest GT driver, running seventeenth overall, with a time of 1:27.759/91.806 mph. There were 33 cars on course in low eighties temperatures. Qualifying is Saturday afternoon.
Krohn Racing ran two Rolex Series Daytona Prototypes for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and has run just one car since, with NIC JONSSON and RICARDO ZONTA. They won the last Grand-Am Rolex Series race at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Due to pressing business, team owner TRACY KROHN wasn’t at the last two races and missed out on the team’s victory. He will be at Laguna, and the team plans to celebrate, and hopefully have another podium finish so Krohn can spray champagne.
ROGER EDMONDSON, who is the President of Grand-Am Road Racing, is also the President of Daytona Motorsports Group, which runs AMA Pro Racing. He’s a busy guy this weekend, as the sports cars are racing at Laguna Seca, while AMA is running motorcycle races at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. Both tracks are in the greater Northern California Bay Area.
An interesting partnership for mutual information sharing between the two events/race tracks was created by JENNIFER CAPASSO, PR Goddess at Laguna Seca. “Our journalists need information from both tracks. We’re so close, we’re sharing. There is no conflict between the two entities.” Each track is providing full disclosure – printed sheets from all on-track session information from the other’s track. Way to go, Jennifer, for the idea and AMA information at Laguna Seca; and kudos to JOHN CARDINALE, VP of Communication at Infineon for the implementation at his track.