Priaulx: AO’s Second in GTD Pro “The Best We Could’ve Got”

AO Racing were “just plugging away” in the GTD Pro class at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, with second place the maximum achievable result due to the pace deficit to class winners Risi Competizione, according to Seb Priaulx.

The Chicago area-based team and its fan-favorite dinosaur-liveried No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R finished runner-up in class upon its class debut, with Priaulx racing alongside Laurin Heinrich and FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar driver Michael Christensen.

However, the team found itself falling considerably behind the class-winning No. 62 Ferrari 296 GT3 of Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Daniel Serra and Davide Rigon.

Priaulx described the podium finish for AO as a “great result” but recognized that the pace deficit to the winning Ferrari was too great to overcome.

“We were just plugging away and second was a great result,” Priaulx told Sportscar365.

“That’s the best job I reckon we could have got. Unless the Ferrari had a problem, I don’t think we would have got any better than that.

“It was a tough one, [a] tough race. I kind of think everyone was obviously playing around a little bit in practice and holding stuff back and they just turned the wick up on Saturday and Sunday.

“We had no thing for it, so we just had to do our race and just keep it clean.”

Ferrari’s superior pace was most clearly visible towards the end of the race, when Serra opened up a gap of some 34 seconds to Heinrich after the final restart with 32 minutes to go.

Serra was ultimately classified a lap ahead of the No. 77 Porsche as Heinrich crossed the line first out of the two drivers.

Christensen, who returned to the GT ranks at Daytona after driving as part of Porsche Penske Motorsport’s GTP team last year, added that AO just had to “deal with it” and also reckoned that second place was a good outcome for the team considering the circumstances.

“Starting from pole, I think already in the first few laps we realized that pole was probably not the true picture of the pace of our car,” he said.

“We had to deal with it and settle with whatever we got. We didn’t have so many contacts and stayed clean. In the end we ended up second, so that was a good achievement.

“One and a half seconds per lap, nothing you can do [about that]. You’re just waiting for them to pass if you are fighting with them after a restart or anything.

“It’s just too big of a difference to start racing. But yeah, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do and try to hope they break or whatever, but it’s just difficult to race against.”

The Dane added that the team ultimately opted for a strategy of keeping its nose clean and hoping for cars ahead to hit trouble.

“For sure that’s part of racing, that cars break, but some cars don’t break,” Christensen said.

“That was always a strategy, but the thing is that works anyway. I mean, that’s how it works here, because you have so many safety cars.

“So you have to stay clean, hopefully you have a good car at the end of the race. So it’s going to work, either if we had the pace or not.”