Ross Kaiser news 2010-10-25

Kaiser conquers the States!
Ross Kaiser tests with Doran Race Team at VIR

Last week Ross Kaiser, the 2011 Sunoco Rolex 24 At Daytona Challenge winner, flew to the Virginia International Raceway (VIR) in America. As part of the Sunoco Daytona Challenge prize Ross completed 2 days of testing for the Doran Racing team together with Brian Frisselle and team regular Brad Jaeger.

Doran are an experienced team lead by Kevin Doran whose team has won the Rolex 24 At Daytona many times. Ross went to VIR to run a Daytona Prototype at an American circuit for the first time; he needed to get used to the car as well getting to grips with driving a left hand drive car.

Ross, severely jet-lagged as he only returned from the last round of the Radical Masters Sunday evening before flying out to the states on the Monday, not only had to learn how to drive a left-hand-drive DP car but also a track that he had never seen. Also to be considered was that this was the first test with Continental as the control tyre supplier so the team had very little data for a perfect car set up.

Despite these challenges the testing went amazingly well and Ross impressed the team, the other racers and the Grand-Am organisation by posting 4th fastest time on the Tuesday afternoon, 1.3 seconds slower than the fastest DP car. Wednesday was hampered by rain until 3pm so unfortunately Ross only got 8 laps in the afternoon on used tyres. Despite this he posted a time only 0.8 seconds off Brian Frisselle's time set on new slicks and only 0.98 seconds off the fastest time also set on new tyres.

Kevin Doran of Doran racing was very impressed by Ross, ' Ross's driving style seemed to fit the Daytona Prototype's right off and he and the team worked on laps for familiarity and driver comfort most of the test time as Ross's speed was right there from early on.'

At VIR experience race instructor and pro-Daytona Prototype driver Guy Cosmo was waiting to take care of Ross as his personal race instructor and mentor to ensure that Ross properly learned to drive the Daytona Prototype.

Guy knows how hard Ross has worked, 'as a driver I know how difficult it is to fly half-way across the globe, get no sleep, meet 20 new people, learn a track you've never seen before, hop in a car you've never driven before- and try to perform. Ross did all of this with flying colours'

The track at VIR is very much like a smaller version of SPA with plenty of fast sweeping corners, low speed hairpins and plenty of undulations. Ross performed exceptionally well; Guy Cosmo Ross's trainer was very impressed with Ross's performance on the track, 'at the end of the first day Ross was turning lap times that put him in the top 4 of the Daytona Prototype category and through this process he never turned a wheel wrong! Ross is going to be very impressive at the Rolex 24 At Daytona and he's certainly deserving of the opportunity.'

Kaiser has been training hard to prepare for the 24 hrs At Daytona, he has been preparing for the new track with the help of iracing - a computer simulation programme as well as brushing up on his Daytona challenge knowledge reading about the history of the iconic race with J.J. O'malley's book kindly given to Ross by J.J himself.

'This is a dream come true really. With our season all over in the UK all of my attention is on the Rolex 24. It's a fantastic event. Without Daytona and Sunoco this event wouldn't be available to me so I'm looking forward to racing in one of the biggest events in the world- you get the broadest cover of drivers from all disciplines - it's the best of the best.' Ross Kaiser

-source: ross kaiser PR