2012 News
Ryan Dalziel Aims To Turn Up The Heat After Pain In The Rain
- 08 May 2012
Ryan, from Windermere in Florida, can’t wait to dry his gear out after getting soaked in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Series Grand Prix of Miami then again in the FIA World Endurance Championship at Spa in Belgium.
And he is aiming to turn up the heat after those two results failed to match the performance of the Starworks Motorsport cars.
A win for Ryan – originally from Lanarkshire in Scotland – and
Venezuelan Enzo Potolicchio in the #8 Ford Riley will catapult the Fort
Lauderdale-based team back to the top of the Daytona Prototype rankings
and get their dream season back on track after a couple of hiccups.
At Spa, the team had already been hit by an engine problem in the Honda
Performance Development LMP2 car that cost them 30 laps when Ryan
climbed behind the wheel. He produced a series of blistering laps,
despite having never raced on the legendary Ardennes circuit before and
showed just why he has become one of the most highly-rated drivers
around at the moment.
He equalled the times set by former Peugeot works driver Sarrazin as
they pulled back an incredible two laps on the field in the closing
stages and boosted their FIA World Endurance Championship chances by
grabbing some vital title points. Ryan, 30, is now just two points
behind the Oak team and seven points behind ADR.
Now he hopes to take that form into the New Jersey Motorsports Park…once his boots have dried.
THE QUOTES: Ryan looks ahead to New Jersey: “My boots are still wet from
two weekends in the rain. New Jersey is notoriously hot so, hopefully,
we will get the chance to go up there and dry out a little bit. It is a
little bit easier for me to jump back into Grand-Am racing because I
know the racing, the tracks and the cars. That is very natural whereas
the WEC is still a bit alien. I am looking forward to getting back to my
natural habitat. We have had a couple of disappointing weekends in both
series, so now it is time to regroup and go after it.
“The unfortunate thing is that we have been stronger in the past two
weekends than we were earlier in the season. In Sebring, we weren’t the
best car but we did the best job. In Spa, I think we were the best car.
It was the same at Homestead, we were dominant in the rain and had a bad
result. We know we have the pace, we just have to get back to winning
ways.”
Ryan looks back on Spa: “What an incredible place. It reminds me of why
Europe has the best tracks in the world. A lot of people were shocked to
hear that it was my first time there because I am from Europe, and it
is so difficult. I struggled in the first few days because I wanted to
maximize track time and not make any mistakes.
“Then I started pushing and that worked for me. My race pace was really
good. It was the first time I have matched Stephane. At Sebring, I was a
little bit behind him, but we left Spa with joint fastest lap.
“Enzo did his job and, with Stephane and I, we were definitely good. We
still got eighth place points so there are positives. If we get the
right result at Le Mans, we are right back up there.
“When we got back out after the engine trouble, we were 30 laps down and
when we finished we were 28 laps down so, by far, we were the best car.
We are still pretty confident. We were lucky that other cars also had
issues.
“We are continuing to learn and we move on to the next one. The team has grown a massive amount.
“For Enzo and I, the challenge was to learn the track, but for the team,
they had gone up a level from Sebring. It was an incredible job, seeing
where we are now to where we were at Sebring. I know we are happy with
the job we did as a team, but there are still things we can work on. We
will get stronger at each event.”
THE FACTS: The Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series Global Barter 250 at New
Jersey Motorsports Park will be on May 13. It will be live on Speed TV
at 1pm (ET).
The next race for Ryan and Starworks Motorsport in the 2012 FIA World
Endurance Championship campaign will be the Le Mans 24 Hours on June
16-17. They started with an LMP2 class win and third place overall at
Sebring in Florida.
He also grabbed an LMPC class win and third place overall in the CORE
autosport car at Long Beach in California in the American Le Mans Series
earlier last month.
Ryan had four Rolex Grand-Am podiums in 2011 – a win at mid-Ohio and
third at Barber, Lime Rock and Watkins Glen. He also had three
fourth-place finishes.
Ryan also gave Starworks Motorsport its first DP victory, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, in 2008.
Find out more at www.ryandalziel.com.