PWC's Sellers adjusts to being 'single'

Bryan Sellers has been plying his trade in endurance racing for more than a decade. It's been a long time since he was the only driver he needed to worry about, completely in control of his own destiny, or at least as much as any racing driver is in the close confines of a dueling pack of GT3 machinery. Joining the Pirelli World Challenge for McLaren K-PAX Racing in one of its 650S GT3 cars has afforded him that opportunity. It also brings him back to race in his home state of Ohio, at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course this weekend, where he hasn't raced since the American Le Mans Series last competed there.

"I haven't been to Mid-Ohio in a long time, and definitely haven't been there with the McLaren," Sellers says of the track nearest to his hometown of Dayton. "I don't know how we'll stack up and how the competition will stack up. On paper it should be good for us and I'm certainly looking forward to trying.

"I will have [a lot of family and friends there]. I am really excited about that. One of the things I've started to appreciate the more I've been around is the people at the event, the ability to share it with people who have meant something in your career or your life. It's been a long time since I've had that amount of people to support me at a race."

Sellers has spent a long time racing Grand-Am, American Le Mans Series and now a GTD-class Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracán in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. So racing in SprintX, where he's been sharing the McLaren with Johnny Kane, isn't a big adjustment for Sellers. But the single-driver Sprint racing is.

"It's definitely different," he admits. "You go from a series that's predominantly based on long races and learning how to drive with two drivers and how to manage your risk versus reward to a series with one driver, and that risk versus reward changes substantially. It's been a bit of a culture shock but it's been a good thing. I think it's basically developing another set of skills that have been valuable. I feel fortunate to be in a position, at this stage and having been driving for as long as I have, to go into a new environment and be able to learn something."

Despite the different environment, he's recorded a steady string of solid finishes, including a third at Long Beach. Still, he's not satisfied and wants better results, and more results. Some of what he sees as lacking in his achievements in the series so far may come down to something as simple as the way World Challenge events play out in terms of timing.

"The biggest adjustment has been the pure scheduling of it all – how it all plays together in track time, the difference in track time and the pickups and dropoffs in the schedule," he explains. "In IMSA, most of the events are run on their own, so there's some form of progression to a schedule, whereas in World Challenge a lot of the times you're running in conjunction with others, so you may be asked to do one session a day and then the next day go qualify. It really forces you to be on your game right away. You really can't make bad decisions. If you get behind in a session, it's difficult to come back from that."

Reworking expectations and the flow of a weekend aside, Sellers says it's been a good challenge and one he's enjoying. And he's especially looking forward to racing in front of a hometown crowd cheering him on.