Bryan Sellers Leads ALMS at Long Beach

Falken Tire Factory Driver Starts from Second on California Streets

LONG BEACH, Calif., April 23, 2013 – Bryan Sellers entered the Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach with extremely high expectations. The Braselton, Ga.-resident was celebrating his fifth anniversary as a Falken Tire factory driver. The No. 17 Team Falken Tire Porsche 911 GT3 RSR he shares with Porsche factory driver Wolf Henzler (Germany) had won two of the last three temporary street circuits that the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón has raced (Baltimore in 2011 and 2012). The years of development effort that Sellers has put into the Falken Azenis race tire has begun to show significant results and Team Falken Tire was coming off their best endurance race result to-date, a third-place at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring (Fla.) in March. All these things pointed towards significant potential and Sellers justified the optimism by leading 26 minutes of the race. However, circumstances after his driving stint would result in a tenth-place finish for the team in the April 20 race.

The weekend got off to an excellent start for Sellers. He and Henzler had run strongly in Friday’s only practice session. The No. 17 was second in that practice just behind the No. 48 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. Using that momentum and charged with qualifying the car, the 2012 ALMS Most Popular Driver Award winner made the most of the 15-minute time trials at the end of the day Friday. The former open-wheel racing champion – who first raced here in the Toyota Atlantic Championship – lapped the 1.968-mile, 11-turn temporary street circuit in one-minute, 18.967-seconds. The time was only a tenth of a second off the pole-setting time of the SRT Viper GTS-R.

Expectations continued to grow as Sellers rolled the car off on the outside of the front row for the two-hour race. After falling back to fourth on the opening laps, the Ohio-native began to take back positions. Despite the start-stop nature of the day’s early laps – brought on by a series of yellow flags and hard racing – Sellers was able to move into the lead of the race. With 57 minutes remaining, he handed the car over to Henzler while in the lead, after pit stops the car dropped to sixth. The German drove his way back towards the front and ran just outside the top-three until some contact was made with another competitor. Race officials viewed the incident as avoidable and the Falken car was required to make a stop in the “penalty box” for 60 seconds. Once released back on track, and with less than 15-minutes remaining, the No. 17 would finish tenth.

Quotes

Bryan Sellers:

On the Grand Prix of Long Beach: “Firstly, the Falken Tire Porsche was great. I felt like we had a lot of pace compared to the cars in front of us. I got caught on the outside of turn one on the start and was pushed wide resulting in a couple position loss. The car was strong so my goal was to not panic and work my way back to the front. I had a great battle was with Garcia in the Corvette. He ran me very hard but very clean. He is a smart guy so it took a lot of planning to try and pass him.

It was a great feeling to be back in the lead of an ALMS race, but Wolf and myself had both hoped the laps we would be leading would come at the end of the race. We felt we had a very strong opportunity and unfortunately things just didn’t go our way.”

On the gains made by Team Falken Tire: “I feel like we are moving in the right direction. We did a lot of off-season testing and I feel like we finally have a handle on the correct way to move with tire development. We have found some significant gains that we have been able to quantify on multiple tests. I do believe we have found some consistency and have made a significant step as a team and with the Falken tire.”

On his qualifying lap: “We expected the Falken Tire Porsche to be very strong in qualifying and we really expected to be able to fight for the pole, which we did. We knew we had something from the first practice. The qualifying lap was very strong. It took a long time for the tires to come in but once they did I was able to push very hard and produce a pretty good lap time.”

On whether this was the best Falken race tire created to-date: “It is difficult to say if it was the best tire we have had over the years because we have had some really good ones! I would say this one is as good as we have had and we are just getting started on the development so hopefully it continues to get better. The Falken Tire engineers are working really hard to keep improving this tire so I am really looking forward to the next step.”

For more on Bryan Sellers, please visit him on the web at "> www.BryanSellersRacing.com . Follow Bryan on Twitter ("> www.Twitter.com/BryanSellers ) and LIKE him on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/BryanSellersRacing . Tune-in to Bryan’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/BryanSellersRacing.

Visit www.FalkenTire.com for more on Team Falken Tire. Learn more about the American Le Mans Series at www.ALMS.com.

Go R/C racing with Bryan at www.HPIRACING.com.

Stayed charged with Batter Tender at www.BatteryTender.com.

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