ELKHART LAKE, Wisconsin (August 6, 2016) – Paul Miller Racing and Madison Snow will start the No. 48 Castrol EDGE Lamborghini Huracán GT3 from the outside of row four in tomorrow’s Continental Tire Road Race Showcase after an eighth-place qualifying run today at Road America.
Round eight of 11 races in the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GT Daytona (GTD) class, the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase can be seen live tomorrow, Sunday, August 7, on FOX Sports 1 (FS1) at 4 p.m. EDT.
Snow, turning a top lap time of 2:08.495, clocked in less than a second behind the pole-winning competitor, but he, co-driver Bryan Sellers and the Paul Miller Racing team were expecting more out of qualifying.
The No. 48 team was among the leaders in the three practice runs that preceded qualifying, including setting the fastest GTD time in Saturday morning’s final session.
By the time qualifying came around this afternoon, a lack of cloud cover made the Road America racing surface as hot as it has been all weekend.
“The heat definitely had a little bit of an effect on the grip we had out there,” Snow said. “One thing that’s always difficult to see is when you get a good time in morning practice and then go and qualify in the heat and you’re way off. Everybody was definitely a little bit slower and didn’t get quicker than this morning, for sure.”
Snow also encountered some slower traffic during a final attempt at a flying lap that was looking like it would have been good enough to crack the top three.
“It’s hard to put your finger on it until you actually get the time to go through all the data, but it’s clear as the temperature came up the track changed,” Sellers said. “All of the Lamborghini’s struggled in qualifying compared to where we were in practice. I’m not quite sure why that should be the case, as we’ve been good in both hot and cold conditions, but we definitely had an imbalance in the car.”
Although the Lamborghini contingent lost some pace in the afternoon heat, the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Huracán GT3 should be a solid race car for tomorrow’s two-hour and 40-minute race.
“I guess what we can look at now is how close all the Lamborghinis are stacked together, and how we didn’t lose much to them,” Snow said. “I definitely think we had a better race car in qualifying than we had this morning. We had a quicker car this morning but now we have a better race car, a better total package.”
The Paul Miller Racing crew will try a few more setup options in Sunday morning’s 20-minute warmup session, but Sellers would be confident racing, if they had to, the Lamborghini as it sits now.
“It’s what we’re going to race tomorrow so we kind of need to evaluate where we are and figure out where we need to go,” Sellers said. “We can certainly race in terms of where we are. I still think we have a good race car, and Madison did a good job, so we can now kind of take a step back and figure out where we go for tomorrow.”
Paul Miller Racing is looking to extend to a third-straight race a recent streak that has seen the No. 48 team post its best results of the season in the last two races.
A fourth-place finish in the Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut two weeks ago followed a season-best third-place showing one race earlier in July at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
In both races, the No. 48 was the top finishing Lamborghini, and the Canada result was the first podium showing for the Italian manufacturer in its first year of IMSA competition.
Sellers also gave Lamborghini its first IMSA pole at Detroit in early June where he and the Paul Miller Racing team were the top qualifiers.
The team is confident they will earn another solid result tomorrow after working typically hard on setup at Road America the last two days.
“We needed to figure something out, and we figured out how to calm the car down and make it easier to drive,” Snow said. “The rear of the car was pretty loose before and now it’s a lot better. We should be able to save the tires a little bit more for the race.”
Sunday race day begins with a 20-minute warm-up at 9:40 a.m. CDT before the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase main event, which starts at 3:05 p.m. CDT.
Follow Paul Miller Racing at www.PaulMillerRacing.com, on Twitter @PaulMilleracing and at the Official Team Page on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/PaulMillerRacing.
