Preview: 5 Hours of Virginia
Things have been going well recently, for both Porsche 911 RSR. In the last race in January, Pascal Theis and Manuel Mayer captured fourth place in the No. 284 GT PRO Porsche. Nathan Manning and Jason Allen did even better and captured a spot on the podium in the No. 385 GT AM Porsche.
“For us, these results are additional motivation, of course. But we want even more.”, team manager Benjamin Fischer said.
Hosting the events this weekend, will be Virginia International Raceway in Alton, Virginia. Counting 18 turns, spread over a length of 3.3 miles (5.3 km) the Full Course-layout of the track demands full concentration and efforts by all drivers.
“Personally, I’ve never driven here before, so it’s not the easiest of weekends, obviously. But we did tons of practice runs in the simulator; that really makes a difference. Still, it’s a challenge to run top times consistently here.”, said Manuel Mayer.
After a long break, Kyle Birnie will make his return to the IVRA Endurance Series and simultaneously make his first series start for Fischer Motorsport. Together with Nathan Manning, he will pilot the No. 385 Porsche in the five-hour race, after Jason Allen is unavailable this weekend due to schedule conflicts.
“It’s been a while, obviously, but it’s great to be back. The car is great. We did a lot of setup work. That’s important, because it means we can focus on strategy and traffic management. I think we’ll be competitive in GT AM. We’ll see.”, Kyle Birnie said on Friday, visibly optimistic.
The No. 284 Porsche team currently sits eighth in the GT PRO championship standings, short of a spot in the top-five by only 14 points. The No. 385 Porsche team holds P5 in the GT AM championship standings, but has a solid chance to make up the six points it needs, to move into the fourth spot this weekend.
Race start for the 5 Hours of Virginia is Saturday 17:00 CET / 11 am EST. Racespot TV will broadcast the race live from start to finish on YouTube.