Sean Rayhall Tapped To Defend Austin TUDOR Championship Race Win
Starworks Motorsport Asks Rising Star to Step Into Prototype Challenge Seat at Lone Star Le Mans
Austin, Texas : September 17, 2015 : Sean Rayhall has been announced as a late addition to the stellar sports car racing card at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) this weekend. The 20-year-old from Winston, Georgia won the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship Prototype Challenge (PC) class at the Austin, Texas-track in 2014 but did not have a seat lined-up for the championship’s Lone Star Le Mans on Saturday. That all changed Wednesday afternoon when Starworks Motorsport owner Peter Baron called asking the 2013 Prototype Lites series champion to step into the No. 88 Starworks Motorsport ORECA FLM09-Chevrolet for the two-hour, 40-minute, penultimate round of the TUDOR Championship. Rayhall will look to defend his class win at the world-renowned facility with veteran Alex Popow (Caracas, Venezuela) on September 19.
Recent History :
The 3.4-mile, 20-turn road course built on the outskirts of the capital city of Texas has proven very good for the young Georgian. In 2014, Rayhall drove the 8Star Motorsports ORECA-Chevrolet to the PC class victory with Luis Diaz. The result helped established the then teenager as one of the premier talents in the class.
More recently, Rayhall closed out the 2015 Indy Light Series Presented by Cooper Tires season with back-to-back top-four finishes at the Indy Lights Grand Prix presented by Cooper Tires and Powered by Mazda in Monterey, California on the September 12-13. Rayhall finished fourth from a sixth-place start on Saturday at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and followed that with a second-place result in Sunday’s 100-mile race driving the No. 8 8Star Motorsports Bass Egg Machine with Silver Arrow Technologies Dallara-Mazda.
As a rookie in the Verizon IndyCar Series feeder program, Rayhall earned two race wins and six top-five finishes in eight event weekends.
Details :
Official TUDOR Championship practice begins at 10:25 a.m. Central Standard Time (CST) on Thursday, September 17. A second session will take place the same day at 4:35 p.m. CST with a third practice on Friday at 9:10 a.m. Prototype Challenge class qualifying is scheduled for 15-minutes starting at 4:35 p.m. CST on Friday. A twenty-minute warm-up will precede the main event at 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning. The two-hour, 40-minute, Lone Star Le Mans takes the green flag on Saturday, September 19 at 11:35 a.m. CST.
The Lone Star Le Mans will be broadcast live at Noon Eastern Standard Time (EST) on FOX Sports 2. FOX Sports 1 will replay the race on Sunday, September 20, starting at 1:30 p.m. EST. IMSA.com will provide audio coverage of every on-track lap, including practice and qualifying while video streaming of qualifying will be available on the IMSA web site beginning at 4:45 p.m., Friday, September 18. The weekend’s activities can be followed on Twitter with the hash tag #LoneStarLeMans.
Quotes from Sean Rayhall :
About Racing At COTA: “I have to thank everyone at Starworks for making this happen so quickly. If you have to be called in at the last minute, you want it to be with a top-flight professional group like Starworks Motorsport! I was kind of down that we weren’t going to have a chance to come back to COTA this weekend and defend the PC class win from last season so getting the phone call from Peter [Baron] made my weekend! It is a bit of a rush to get the seat fitting and the first practice done within a few hours of each other but I am not worried at all. The Starworks guys are a first-class organization, that is really clear from their results. I know the car will be first class. Personally, I know the Prototype Challenge cars and the track really well, so we have that covered. Now we just go out and put it all together. The competition in the TUDOR PC class is intense but Alex and I are going out with a goal to podium on Saturday.”
About Sean Rayhall :
Sean Rayhall, 20, is from Winston, Georgia. Starting in go-karts at the age of seven, Rayhall’s resume to-date is an impressive list of “youngest ever” to: win a formula car race in North America, win the Skip Barber Series and win a Skip Barber National event. He has competed and won on road courses and ovals in open wheel, prototypes and GT cars earning the 2013 IMSA Cooper Tire Prototype Lites Championship. In 2015, he secured two Indy Lights wins – the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course – in his rookie season. The success garnered him a test day with Chip Ganassi Racing running times competitive with Scott Dixon, recently crowned for the fourth time as Verizon IndyCar Series Champion, in Dixon’s own Dallara-Chevrolet.
For more on Sean Rayhall, visit his personal web site at www.SeanRayhall.com, follow him on Twitter at @SeanRayhall and like him on Facebook at Sean.Rayhall.
To learn about Starworks Motorsport click on www.starworksmotorsport.com .
Visit Sean’s personal partners to learn more about the people that support this rising talent: Bass Egg, www.bassegg.com, and Silver Arrow Technologies, www.silverarrowtech.com .
About The TUDOR United SportsCar Championship :
The TUDOR United SportsCar Championship is the premier sports car and endurance racing series in North America. Most races feature two (2) styles of cars, Prototype and GT (Grand Touring). Each style of car has two (2) classes, Pro and Pro-Am, meaning there are four (4) classes of racing on track together, each with their own battle for the lead.
About The Prototype Challenge (PC) Class :
The Prototype Challenge (PC) class is a spec class featuring open-cockpit race cars and technology such as a carbon fiber chassis, carbon brakes and sequential gearbox.
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