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Mills aiming for success at Barber

Michael Mills is hoping to back up his performances at St. Pete and Long Beach with another stellar run this weekend.

#41 EFFORT Racing Porsche GT3R: Michael Mills

#41 EFFORT Racing Porsche GT3R: Michael Mills

David Yowe

After finishing second in class at St. Petersburg and winning his class at Long Beach, Michael Mills has it all to play for in the Pirelli World Challenge race weekend at Barber Motorsports Park.

Mills qualified third in class at Barber for the first race of the weekend doubleheader, which is pretty good considering that this is the first time he’s driven the track since 2006. But so far this season he’s been having a season like he expected.

“I had a high expectation for where I’d be in GT-A, I did expect to be up in the GT-A points. I’m a little disappointed that I’m not further up in the GT [points]. I would like to have seen some more consistent top ten finishes, Mills said.”

This season has seen GT3 spec cars competing in the GT class of PWC and Mils is excited about driving the Porsche GT3R for EFFORT Racing.

“I think here we’re finally seeing what a GT3 car can do with the aero and everything the way it works. For me, this is probably the most advanced race car that I’ve driven, and I’ve gotten a lot of seat time in Porsche Cup cars and I’ve got limited seat time in Ferrari Challenge cars,” Mills said.

Mills did notice the differences between the three cars and how they drove, particularly in the corners..

“For me, the speeds are really no higher than what you would see in a Ferrari Challenge car or for a Cup car, it’s actually maybe a bit slower and it doesn’t accelerate as good, but a lot of the mid-corner speeds are much, much higher,” Mills explained.

Mills is coming off of a third place finish at St. Petersburg and a win in the GT-A class at Long Beach. He credits the win in Long Beach to his driving style and how it helped him during the race.

“For me, I’ve always been a bit of a cautious racer I would say, I use a measured amount of risk and it paid off in Long Beach. I knew where I needed to be and I knew where I was with the position. I know that on any given day, I can’t race against (Nick) Mancuso, I knew that I needed to be consistent, stay where I need to be, be second, not worry about it and bring home that second place and I got a bit lucky with Mancuso driving as hard as he was driving and he had a bit of bad luck so I kind of benefitted from that bad luck,“ Mills said.

His hopes for the season remain on par with his early season form that he showed.

“I think I have the potential to finish on the podium in GT-A in probably every race and I just need to make sure I don’t make a mistake or hopefully I don’t suffer some bad luck by getting hit by a GTS car or getting involved [in an incident],” Mills said.

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