For the Automatic Racing team, the Roar Before the Rolex 24 goal was simple: get comfortable with the year-old No. 99 Invisible Glass Aston Martin Vantage GT4 on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway. Looking to return to the podium at the track, the team prepared for one of the biggest races of the season: the four-hour BMW Endurance Challenge, race one of the 2020 Michelin Pilot Challenge season (Jan. 24).
The Orlando-based team considers Daytona its home track, which adds to both the pressure and the excitement as preparations ramp up for the season opener at the end of the month. Through six test sessions over three days, the team worked through every kind of weather condition possible, from sunny and warm on Friday afternoon to Sunday morning’s frigid temperatures. The Aston Martin, which made its North American race debut at Daytona last year, continued its progress throughout the weekend.
The Automatic Racing team and drivers Kris Wilson and Gary Ferrera focused the first three sessions (in warm conditions) on getting Ferrara acclimated to the high banks of Daytona in a different style Aston Martin than the older version he’d driven to the Daytona podium in the 2019 season-opener.
Automatic Racing team principal David Russell was pleased with driver and car progress through the weekend, feeling as though the setup that the team has settled upon will roll off the truck well when they return to the iconic 3.56-mile “roval” in two weeks.
“We definitely have a good baseline after this weekend,” said Russell. “We came up with something for Sunday morning’s session that we were good with, and we stuck with that for the final session. The weather was definitely a curve ball this weekend, as was the different rubber put down by the WeatherTech cars throughout the weekend, but the goal was always the same – to shoot for balance.”
The Stoner Car Care team returns to Daytona International Speedway in three weeks for the four-hour BMW Endurance Challenge, part of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Rolex 24 at Daytona weekend.
