If you’re a fan of the powerhouse Flying Lizards Motorsport team, you’ll soon know where to cheer on the hearty band of sports car veterans.
As Marshall Pruett revealed earlier this month, FLM is evaluating whether to continue in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship’s GT Daytona class, or shift its focus to the Pirelli World Challenge series. Team manager Eric Ingraham has been tasked with plotting FLM’s next chapter in the sport with its Audi R8s, and based on our conversation on Monday, it appears the team is still in the information gathering phase.
“For us, we’re still in the same spot from when we last talked,” Ingraham told Marshall. “We’re still working through the budget numbers and trying to understand the World Challenge option a little bit better so we can make a decision. Hopefully we’re in a much more educated position to make a decision, and I’d think we’ll have a pretty definitive direction by early November.”
It’s safe to say FLM’s interest in taking its R8s to a different series has been aided by the Balance of Performance struggles they’ve encountered in GTD. FLM was one of three teams fielding the V10-powered R8 last season, and found the German coupes at the wrong end of the competitive spectrum on numerous occasions. The Paul Miller Racing team won the season finale at Road Atlanta with its R8, the first of the year for the marque, but it’s also worth noting the team used the circuit as its primary testing facility.
That fact does not diminish their accomplishment, but it does highlight that it took specific expertise at one track to coax the R8 into Victory Lane.
“I know that Audi and IMSA have been having meetings, and the series is working on more [Balance of Performance] stuff taking a bigger bite of the apple to understand each car in GTD,” Ingraham added.
Suggestions of FLM heading to PWC with a three-car Audi R8 effort continue to make the rounds.
“As far as the quantity, the equipment required is much different, and for two trucks, running three cars makes sense, and even four cars would be possible if you’re really efficient on your truck packing,” Ingraham said. “Three cars is the right number, but making it all work, finding the right folks, making the budget numbers work, all of that is sitting on my desk right now. Looking at the combined World Challenge and Tudor Championship calendars, the costs, the conflicts, and all of that is where I’m focused at the moment.”
As Ingraham noted in our first conversation, a move to PWC wouldn’t preclude participating in a few Tudor Championship events, and vice versa, but as Ingraham explains, switching the cars between full GT3 specifications in PWC and IMSA’s hybrid GTD/GT3 settings appears to be a process that holds limited interest for the Sonoma Raceway-based team.
“Switching cars back and forth is not really practical, but there are one or two events, Sebring and Petit Le Mans, that would be easier,” he explained. “There are some others where it could be done, but it depends on the interest we receive.”
