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TUDOR UNITED SPORTSCAR CHAMPIONSHIP: ROLEX 24 AT DAYTONA


January 25, 2015


Ryan Briscoe

Antonio Garcia

Mike Guasch

Tom Kimber-Smith

Jan Magnussen

Andrew Novich

Andrew Palmer


DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA

NATE SIEBENS:  We'll finish up here with our winners from the Prototype Challenge and our GT Le Mans winners here at the 53rd Rolex 24 at Daytona.
We'll start with the PC guys, the No.52 PR1/ Matheson Motorsports Oreca FLM 09.  Andrew, we'll start with you on the far end.  Obviously it's your first Rolex 24 at Daytona start.  Good way to do it.
ANDREW NOVICH:  Yeah, to win on your debut in anything is obviously a great way to start it.  To do my first Rolex 24 and win it the way that we did, the luck was obviously a factor, but we had our share of bad luck, as well, blowing the oil line, having the splitter come off.  You know, just a bunch of little things, but it was cool.  It was awesome.
NATE SIEBENS:  Let's move over to Tom.  You were in the car at the tail end.  Had you kind of gone into‑‑ did you think there was anyway you guys were going to get that win?  Obviously pretty surprised I would have to think.
TOM KIMBER‑SMITH:  Well, yeah, definitely surprised.  I got in the car with two hours and 40 minutes to go and Bobby pretty much said just push and see if you can make Colin make a mistake.  It's not nice to see him in the wall, and then it's definitely not nice to see a car on fire.
It was a hard race for us.  11 hours in we lost the power steering, so the remainder of the race was physically quite hard, but all of us did a great job.  We had quite a lot of bad luck at the beginning of the race.  The last 12 hours sort of went our way barring the power steering issue.
All we had to do was keep it on the black stuff, and people around us made mistakes.  Right at the end, I didn't think we were going to catch Colin, but he made a mistake overtaking I think it was one of the DP cars, and that's part of racing, so very happy to take the win.
NATE SIEBENS:  Mike, obviously you've had some pretty good luck in big events.  You won the 12 Hours of Sebring a few years ago, obviously got a Rolex 24 here today and also were the ALMS PC champion a couple years ago.  Talk about adding this one to your résumé.
MIKE GUASCH:  Yeah, this is the biggest one for sure.  Yeah, I have won Sebring twice and those were great.  This is a 24, much more difficult, obviously.  As Tom said, it was a tough race for us, because again, we had oil lines blow up, early on went six laps down, and we just had to keep digging, digging, digging to stay in it, and there's always a lot of attrition in this class as you know, so the people can just stand and hang in there the longest, and we just kept it together.  We pushed Colin before, we've seen it before, we did it at Laguna a couple years ago, and he will make a mistake.  He's damned fast, but if he makes a mistake then you get him.  That's what we had to do.  I feel bad for the car.  It wasn't good.  But thanks for the win.
NATE SIEBENS:  Andrew, let's have your comments here on joining this team here for the Rolex 24 at Daytona and walking away with a new Rolex.
ANDREW PALMER:  Yeah, it was a bit of a last‑minute deal that came through, so super excited to get my first 24 win, actually first 24‑hour race win ever on my debut.  It was a pleasure to work with all these guys.  Bobby runs a first‑class effort, and all my teammates just performed.  I can't be any happier.  It's a shame to see the other car end up like that, but at the end of the day, it's good to have a win under your belt.
NATE SIEBENS:  Let's slide over to the GT Le Mans winners.  Let's start with the trio from the No.3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C7.R.  It's the team's second Rolex 24 at Daytona win, first since taking an overall victory in 2001.  It's also Antonio Garcia's second Rolex 24 win where Jan Magnussen and Ryan Briscoe, both this is their first win.  Ryan, let's start with you.  How does that new Rolex feel?
RYAN BRISCOE:  It's beautiful.  I've been coming here since 2005, so yeah, I wasn't a big fan of this place until now.  It's just such a tough race.  Jan and I were talking about it before we came in, for both of us it's the first time we've ever done the race without going back to the garage.  I think that was a huge part of us winning today was staying out of trouble.  There's so much action all race long.  I felt like it was a sprint race out there from the word go, in our class at least, and the racing was very good but very tough, a lot of fun, but very hard‑fought.  I think the key was keeping our nose clean, having a fast race car at the end of the day.
NATE SIEBENS:  Antonio, obviously you know what it feels like to stand atop the podium here at Daytona.  You did it in 2009 with Brumos Racing in an overall victory.  Any difference here today with this group?
ANTONIO GARCIA:  Not really.  Every time you win here it's very, very special.  I've been chasing this victory since 2009, even if I won it back then.  This is a very unique race.  The first race of the year, so it's very difficult to be at 100 percent right away for the team, for the drivers, and it was just a normal perfect race‑‑ not normal I have to say.  Everything ran perfect, and as Ryan said, we just kept our nose clean, and I had the best car to fight on the last eight minutes of the race.
NATE SIEBENS:  Jan, you've had other big wins obviously in your career, but maybe put into perspective getting this one here for the first time.
JAN MAGNUSSEN:  Well, it was a hard one for me to win.  I've tried 11 times.  I've always felt that I was within a shot of winning the race, but we always had to go back to the garage sometime to fix something, and that was the big thing this weekend was that we had a really, really fast race car, and we were able to push hard.  We stayed out of trouble, no mistakes, no damage to the car, good pit stops, great pit stops, and that was the key to winning this race.

Q.  Early in the morning I think you and some other GTLM teams drove nearly identical lap times with the prototype cars.  Do you think this new United SportsCar Championship and GRAND‑AM together, we can see or expect in maybe one of the next races a GTLM car taking the overall win?
JAN MAGNUSSEN:  I doubt that.  This place is pretty unique.  We have really long straights in the GT cars.  The GT cars have quite good top speed, so that counts for us.  I don't know that the tracks that we're going to that we will have a situation where a GT car can win overall, but that really depends on if they go completely berserk in the P class.  Maybe.
NATE SIEBENS:  Can you talk about the level of competition in your class?  Seems like top to bottom every team and every driver lineup is really, really strong.
ANTONIO GARCIA:  That's the good thing about this race.  It's the first race of the season, and you have drivers coming from many other series.  You have every single manufacturer has their best drivers coming here, and we show that, BMW, Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari.  You couldn't see a better lineup overall for all the manufacturers here.  And I think we show that.  Since lap 1 all the way to the last lap, we showed that GTLM is very competitive and teams are extremely competitive, too, and you can't afford to do any single mistake.  Very proud that I was in the right car, and we just did what we had to do, drive a perfect car.
NATE SIEBENS:  Gentlemen, congratulations.  Thank you very much for joining us, and we'll see you all at Sebring.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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