Liddell: Rebel Rock’s GTWC America Debut “A Big Step”

Photo: John Dagys

Robin Liddell says that Rebel Rock Racing’s foray into full-time GT3 competition, in GT World Challenge America powered by AWS, is a “big step” for the team as it sets its sights on a weekend of learning at Circuit of The Americas.

The longtime IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge squad, which won this year’s four-hour season opener at Daytona International Speedway, has made the move from multiple years of GT4 racing, where it achieved considerable success.

While initially planning a full season GTWC America effort with its newly acquired Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, Liddell, who doubles as the team manager and co-driver with DePew, said its strong start to the Pilot Challenge season led to a one-race delay to its SRO America program.

“To be honest, we made the decision to come over here for the full season, prior to Daytona,” Liddell told Sportscar365.

“Then winning the GT4 race at Daytona, the four-hour, that kind of threw the cat amongst the pigeons and then we were like, ‘We’ve had a pretty awesome start of the year, maybe we should do Sebring and see how it goes.’

“Once we made the decision to do Sebring, it would have been a tall order for us to get out to Sonoma [the following week].

“Especially as it would have been our first event with the car, we just thought trying to do Sebring and Sonoma back-to-back, with what we had and how we wanted to do it…

“It was not like we were satisfying a customer. Frank didn’t really want to do both back-to-back. We as a team didn’t want to get involved in the logistics of trying to make that happen.

“Unfortunately we missed Sonoma. But we’re pretty excited to get going with this.”

Liddell said the move into GT3 racing for the Florida-based team has come as a “big step” after so many years, particularly in IMSA-sanctioned competition.

“It’s a step change,” he explained. “It’s a different approach in a lot of way.

“To be fair, we don’t have any particularly high expectations for this weekend. We just want to go out there, run the car, start understanding what we don’t have, what we need to do better, what we don’t know, and just go and enjoy it.”

Liddell and DePew got their first taste of the GT3-spec Aston Martin in the ten-hour Apex One endurance race at Sebring International Raceway last November, which turned into an extended test session after the car sustained some damage in practice.

However, it marked DePew’s first time in the GT3 car, which Liddell said “ticked the box” to officially green-light this program.

“Over the next month or so, that’s when we decided that GT World Challenge is the right way for us to go,” he said.

“I think it’s a good way to get into it. It’s been a while since I’ve raced over here. But I think they do a good job on the customer relations side.

“They were keen to have us here.”

With relatively limited testing under their belts, aside from a few hours of race mileage, and an additional single-day test with the car, also at Sebring, in February, Liddell is heading into this weekend with realistic expectations and looking to build as the season unfolds.

“We’re open minded,” he said. “I don’t really have much expectations. There’s a lot of good teams and some good drivers, obviously.

“We’re feeling our way into this. But I’m excited about it and I’m looking forward to it.

“We just want to get this weekend under our belt. Hopefully just finish the race, learn a bit, enjoy ourselves, figure out what we need going forward.

“Sebring is only a couple of weeks away. Obviously we just ran at Sebring and we did test the car in February, so I hope that at Sebring we can give a better account of ourselves.

“Then at that point, we’ll have a better sense of what we really need going forwards.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John