By Brian Bielanski, Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla (RacingWire) – TRG owner/driver Kevin Buckler took an opportunity to stir the pot at the Rolex 24, accusing the Mazda teams of sandbagging in the Rolex Series' January test, resulting in a rules change that Buckler calls unfair.
“We couldn't believe the Mazdas were able to snooker the series into a rules change before the race,” said Buckler. “We asked the question and nobody was able to give us the answer. In the history of Daytona no car has ever gone slower in the winter test than the summer race. We're always down on power. We're always down on speed. It's hot, it's humid. But somehow magically these Mazdas managed to go two or three miles per hour slower, while the rest of us went faster. It seemed like everyone in the paddock knew what was going on but son-of-a-gun if they didn't pull it off. They sandbagged really, really well and got the rule change.”
Speedsource team owner Sylvain Tremblay dismissed the charge of sandbagging. In fact, he hopes Grand-Am will do more to slow the Porsches down.
“Sandbagging... no thank you. You see how hard we drive, if we're sandbagging how did we finish 15th, 16th, and 17th in qualifying.
Tremblay said this goes back to last year when Grand-Am gave the Porsches a different ride height, a bigger engine, and were allowed to remove the restricter plate. “Someone joked the only thing they didn't give them was the kitchen sink,” Tremblay said.
Series spokesman Herb Branham tells RacingWire, “claims of opponents sandbagging at Daytona test sessions are nothing new. That said, when we went into testing Grand-Am was real serious about data acquisition and watching the competition and we were intent on gathering all that information. We made some decisions based on that gathering of information and we feel completely confident in those decisions and we feel that time will bear that out.”
The rules change, by the way, gave the Mazdas 200 more rpms and let the teams trim 35 pounds off the RX-8's weight.
