Sandbagging in Daytona a ‘waste of time’ for Rolex 24 GTP cars

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Westbrook, who was fastest in FP2 at Daytona on Thursday in his Chip Ganassi Racing-run Cadillac V-LMDh, says the equal Balance of Performance of the new GTP cars – which all feature a common electrical hybrid system – means there have been no efforts made to hide the potential of the cars.

The four GTP manufacturers were all within 0.7s of each other in qualifying last Sunday at Daytona, and when asked if he thought there was any sandbagging going on, Westbrook replied: “Not in our class. I don’t think there’s much point.

“You could waste your time doing it. If I was running the series, I wouldn’t make any changes until after Le Mans. It’s so new, I don’t think you can say ‘that car needs more power’.

“I think the data that they receive now, they can see what power levels everyone is running. I don’t think you can hide anything. And, so far as we’ve all seen, it’s pretty close.

“Sandbagging... I think it’s a question for the other classes.”

#60 Meyer Shank Racing w/ Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06: Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud

Photo by: Art Fleischmann

Meyer Shank Racing’s Helio Castroneves also shrugged off talk of sandbagging in GTP, and says Acura is taking an “open book” approach.

“[HPD president] David Salters and everyone from Acura never talks about [sandbagging], we just go as fast as we can, deliver as much as we can, and hopefully the system works,” he said. “We’ll see. I believe they have so much more technology now to measure the cars, and that’s why if we play games we might be in trouble.

“Everyone at Acura is being an open book, trying everything we can, and that’s the way it should be.”

His team boss, Mike Shank, added: “At the Roar [test], I didn’t think of the BoP one time. I’ve got to make sure this car finishes. And that’s different to the GTD guys, that’s the whole conversation.

“We don’t want to be in that, and I think in IMSA, all cars qualify within seven tenths, that’s a pretty good damn good dart throw right away. The #60 and the #10 [Wayne Taylor Racing’s sister ARX-06] are exactly where they have been since practice one [at the Roar]. We have not changed anything.”