{"id":3531,"date":"2010-03-20T19:41:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T23:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=3531"},"modified":"2010-03-20T19:41:01","modified_gmt":"2010-03-20T23:41:01","slug":"patron-highcroft-make-strong-start-to-sebring-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/alms\/patron-highcroft-make-strong-start-to-sebring-assault\/","title":{"rendered":"PATR\u00d3N HIGHCROFT MAKE STRONG START TO SEBRING ASSAULT"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5><span style=\"color: #000080;\">&#8220;We have to keep doing what we are doing and stay out of trouble.&#8221; &#8211; Duncan Dayton<\/span><\/h5>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At the half way point of the toughest endurance race in international sportscar racing, Patr\u00f3n Highcroft Racing held a dominant advantage in the LMP2 class at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>After starting fifth and first in the LMP2 class, Simon Pagenaud leapt to an early class lead and had steched out that advantage to 53 seconds after only 10 laps.<\/p>\n<p>The Frenchman continued to extend the gap in his opening stint, stretching the lead to nearly a lap before making his first fuel stop. A stop-go penalty for speeding in pit lane followed by a full course yellow erased much of his advantage. But Pagenaud again extended the gap on the restart before handing over to Marino Franchitti after 1 hour, 53 minutes behind the wheel.<\/p>\n<p>Franchitti enjoyed a fast, trouble-free double-stint with the team electing to double-stint their Michelin tires. David Brabham entered the car for his first run after a further 59 laps and despite track conditions becoming increasingly slippery, the Australian also completed a double-stint.<\/p>\n<p>After six hours, the #1 Honda Performance Development ARX-01c car was fourth overall and first in the LMP2 class with a lead of nearly 3 laps.<\/p>\n<p>The overall race lead for the first race of the 2010 American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patr\u00f3n was held by the #08 Peugeot LMP1 entry.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>DAVID BRABHAM<br \/>\n<\/em><\/strong>&#8220;So far things have run like clockwork and the guys at Patr\u00f3n Highcroft Racing have given us a fantastic car.<br \/>\n&#8220;The track however plays some funny games out there. There is a lot of pick up out there and once you pick that up on your tires, it is very hard to get rid of it.<br \/>\n&#8220;Those little bits of runner get all over the tire.\u00a0 When you clean it off, you can push really hard, but if it doesn&#8217;t want to come off it can be a challenge.<br \/>\n&#8220;I had a long period in my stint where I couldn&#8217;t push and you just had to maintain your lap time.<br \/>\n&#8220;Once it cleaned off I was 3 seconds a lap quicker.<br \/>\n&#8220;There is still a long way to go.\u00a0 The car is driveable and predictable &#8211; we&#8217;ve done a good job so far.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>DUNCAN DAYTON<br \/>\n<\/em><\/strong>&#8220;We had a bit of an issue with the rear brakes not getting the temperatures we wanted to see and David had some trouble with pick-up.<br \/>\n&#8220;Simon also got a stop-go penalty for speeding in pit lane although our data indicated he was under the limit.<br \/>\n&#8220;We&#8217;re in a good position so far with a lead of nearly three laps over the Cytosport guys. Dyson also had trouble early so we&#8217;re looking strong.<br \/>\n&#8220;We&#8217;re only half way however, we&#8217;ve got more than two full ALMS sprint races to go before we get to the checkered flag.<br \/>\n&#8220;We have to keep doing what we are doing and stay out of trouble.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Source ALMS \u00a9 RIF<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;We have to keep doing what we are doing and stay out of trouble.&#8221; &#8211; Duncan Dayton \u00a0 At the half way point of the toughest endurance race in international sportscar racing, Patr\u00f3n Highcroft Racing held a dominant advantage in the LMP2 class at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[9],"tags":[5264,5334,588,40,38,587,170,757,37,5279,751],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3533,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}