Image by Martin Little
Black Swan Porsche’s Rolex 24 in jeopardy
Black Swan Racing’s Porsche 911 GT3 R, entered in the GTD class here at Daytona, may be forced to withdraw from the race meeting early after its heavy incident in Free Practice 1.
Trenton Estep was aboard the car when it had an off towards the end of the opening session of the weekend, team owner Tim Pappas explaining to RACER after practice that it came down to inexperience.
“Trenton unfortunately had a couple of tires on the painted line between the apron and banking," he said. "He’s new at Daytona, unfortunately those lines are slippery and it caught him out.
“It’s terminal damage unless we can get the parts to fix it from Porsche.”
The part required, Pappas says, is a "front chassis element and clip." He expressed concern that with it being a new car that there may be limited availability of spares from Porsche.
The team is working on the front of the car regardless, with the aim of making the race.
A Porsche spokesperson told RACER that it is working with the team to analyze the damage, to work out if it can be repaired on site.
Should the Black Swan Porsche not take the start, that would reduce the GTD field to 17 cars and the full entry list to just 37 cars, a record-low for the race.
Stephen Kilbey
UK-based Stephen Kilbey is RACER.com's FIA World Endurance Championship correspondent, and is also Deputy Editor of Dailysportscar.com He has a first-class honours degree in Sports Journalism and is a previous winner of the UK Guild of Motoring Writers Sir William Lyons Award.
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