Sellers: Paul Miller Will “Likely Fight” Repeat of Brake Issues

Bryan Sellers said brake issues are ‘on the forefront of our minds’ at Paul Miller Racing heading into this weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Cadillac after the team repeatedly struggled with it in past endurance races.

Most recently, late-race brake problems on the No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 derailed a potential GTD Pro class victory bid at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January.

The Georgia-based squad also overcame problems related to the brakes at Sebring a year ago, where Sellers, Madison Snow and Corey Lewis took a GTD class win.

Sellers has talked about the persistent brake problems in the longer IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship before, describing it as “confusing” and something the team has to “sort out.”

Speaking to Sportscar365 ahead of Saturday’s around-the-clock enduro, he indicated the problem has not yet been addressed and will likely play a factor again.

“I would suspect, seeing as not much has changed, that we will likely fight the same issue here,” Sellers said.

“We probably need quite a bit of yellows to not run into that problem. Maybe also an option is if we get a big yellow at six hours, we change the brakes anyway.

“Something like that, give ourselves an opportunity to go to the end. But it’s definitely on the forefront of our minds.”

Sellers remained confident that the team will be able to solve the issue, but indicated that it remains a question mark for the time being.

“I just don’t think we found the answer yet,” he said. “I know that Turner has struggled with a similar issue, but there’s got to be a solution to it.

“There’s always an answer. We just haven’t got there and unfortunately, it’s a pretty important part of racing.

“I don’t think we found it for this weekend either, but we’ll have some time before Watkins Glen and Petit to see if we can finally address the issue.”

The 41-year-old said the Daytona setback has lit a fire of motivation under the team, eager to secure its first victory in GTD Pro after years of success racing in the GTD class.

“Any time you come that close and you don’t get the victory, you want it that much more,” Sellers said.

“You’re just so close, you can taste it. We’ve been lucky the last couple years to get a victory early in the season.

“You want to check one off early because it gets everything rolling in the right direction. We’ve had years where you’ve waited until like two races to the end and get your victory.

“It’s hard to get that monkey off your back. I think that’s probably the bigger thing.

“It would be really nice to put ourselves in a position to get a win, establish who we are in Pro and then move on to racing like we know how to race.

“Last year was, I would say, a bit of fortune for us to win. We had a really good strategy, a really good last run on fuel economy with Madison.

“So I don’t suspect it will unfold the same way this year. Hopefully we have a bit more pace.

“Hopefully we have pace similar to what we did in Daytona and can fight for the win outright.”