Rain Soaks Sebring and Davis Family Hopes
Photos by Mike Weber
Brandon Davis' #10 ACS/Sun Microsystems Ford Mustang Cobra was leading the parade lap at the SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge GT Championship season opener in Sebring, FL, when heavy drizzle began to fall around the 3.7-mile circuit.
After seeing cars having difficulty negotiating the track, SCCA Pro Racing officials elected to run an additional pace lap and begin the race with a rolling, single-file start.
Eventual race winner, Randy Pobst, managed to pass Davis early on, as the cars kicked up spray and searched for grip on the opening lap.
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"On the start, when I got by Brandon, he had big wheel-spin on the start-finish line paint stripes," Pobst said. "He got sideways and I lifted and then got back in again it once I got by him."
Pobst decided early to make the switch to full wet tires and re-joined the race from the back of the field. It was a decision that would pay back handsomely. "When we changed, it still wasn’t a sure thing. We took a gamble. It could have quit raining right there, but it didn’t."
Brandon Davis recovered from a late-race brush with the wall on a restart to post a fourth-place finish in his Mustang. His father, Mike Davis, managed a seventh place finish in the #11 Mustang Cobra.
Davis built the first of these cars last year, but early outings showed the need for additional sorting. Despite the rain, it is clear that much of the sorting out has now been accomplished. Brandon had recorded fastest practice time, before rain during qualifying forced officials to adopt practice times to determine the starting grid.
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