The restart of the 2020 IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Series season is just a week away. As the drivers start to prepare to get back behind the wheel, many of them are anxious on how the first turn is going to be when the green flag drops.
In most cases, the first turn will be like riding a bike. Once you get on it for the first time, you get used to it again. While in other cases, there will be some antsy drivers who may loose control of their car and be a lot more cautious about the first turn at Daytona.
For the Whelen Engineering Racing team, drivers Pipo Derani and Felipe Nasr, think that once the green flag drops at Daytona and laps start ticking away, it’ll be back to normal.
“I hope they all think it’s a game and went straight into Turn 1, locking breaks and I get the lead or something like that,” Nasr said jokingly about the what the first turn could look like. We drivers, it’s like riding a bicycle. Once you get into that flow, know what you are driving, the procedures, etc (it’ll be fine). Plus, you got to control that aginity, where we’ve been so long away from the racetrack and you want to show something at lap 1. That’s not going to work right? But, I’m hoping for a clean race. It’s great IMSA brought the effort to put the series and calendar together, and get back into race mode. All in all, I’m looking forward to get back to my No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac.”
Meanwhile, Nasr’s teammate Pipo Derani, believes the first turn is going to be difficult at first then calm.
“Well, I think the teams are going to be telling the drivers to take it easy at a two hour and 40 minute race,” Derani said. “With that said, we’re drivers, we want to win. It’s not a 24 hour race at Daytona, so you’ve gotta to make the move. But, in the end, I think it’s going to be more difficult for drivers that have not log enough with the team. Those kind of things can make a difference in the end.”
“For me and Felipe, we have a really nice stable relationship with the team. They trust us a lot, which gives us a more relaxed feeling going in to a race like this. Consistency and the work you do, it’s going to take that anxiety out of the driver. That’s one of the strengths we have as a team, we believe in each other. Whenever Felipe is in the car, I know what exactly what he is doing and have 100 percent trust on him. When we’re working on setup, it’s the same thing the other way around. So knowing what you have in your hands heading into this event, I think that takes a lot of anxiety out of the drivers hand. For sure, there’s going to be a lot of drivers out there going 110 percent into Turn 1, but we have to be smart and we know what we have in our hands.”
