Drama late on as Seb secures third place at Daytona
Seb Priaulx began his debut season as a Ford factory driver by stepping onto the podium.
The Guernseyman had a very promising start to his hunt for GTD Pro glory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, as teammate Mike Rockenfeller qualified their No 64 Ford Mustang GT3 on pole, but ultimately they settled for third as their sister car stole their thunder by winning the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship opener.
The No 65 Ford crew of Frederic Vervisch, Chris Mies, and Dennis Olsen took the chequered flag just 1.9sec. ahead of the No 3 Corvette in second, followed another 3.8sec. later by Priaulx, Rockenfeller and Austin Cindric after a draining 723-lap race.
Certainly, the result showed off Ford Multimatic Motorsport’s strength in depth this season.
‘P3 at the line, that’s all we could manage today,’ Priaulx wrote on social media.
‘Congrats to our sister car for the victory.’
Rockenfeller had led a wonderful one-two between the Fords in qualifying, outpacing the No 65 by 0.33sec.
However, the German veteran expressed his concerns over how tyre degradation would impact them in the 24-hour race – a very different affair to a qualifying lap.
‘The way we treated it for “qualy”, I think, was really good and spot on, and that gave us an advantage, but that is not valid for the race,’ he said.
Rockenfeller maintained first place for little over two minutes, which was emblematic of a close and ever-changing race, featuring 10 different leaders throughout.
Priaulx had enjoyed temporary leads in his initial stints, but positions continued to shift and he could not lock down a place in the top four.
The 24-year-old Sarnian took over for the last time with under 3hrs left, well in contention after a strong stint from Rockenfeller.
It was in the final 15min. that the race got red-hot, including drama just in front as Kelvin van der Linde’s No 1 BMW spun off track after contact from Nicolas Varrone’s No 4 Corvette, who consequently had to serve a drive-through penalty.
That helped open the door for Priaulx to take third spot in the dying minutes as the other Ford rode untroubled into victory lane.
