Pirelli is pleased with the performance of its P Zero Racing Slicks during the March 6 Grand Prix of Miami held at the Homestead-Miami Speedway road course for Round 2 of the 2010 Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series.
Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas earned the Daytona Prototype Championship series lead with their first victory of the season – taking top honors for the second time in three years at the race. GT-class honors went to Emil Assentato and Jeff Segal.
This year more than half of the Daytona Prototypes running in the race eclipsed 2009’s track record in qualifying.
The green flag dropped at 5 p.m. Saturday with sunny skies and temperatures just below 70 degrees. The race ended two hours and forty-five minutes later in complete darkness and nearly 10 degrees cooler than at the start. Despite the change in conditions and Homestead-Miami’s notoriously challenging surface for tires and suspension configurations, the P Zeros received praise from the assembled drivers.
“This is the toughest track as far as tire wear is concerned,” says Rojas, who drove the winning No. 01 BMW Riley at the race start. “I think this Pirelli was an upgrade over last year’s tire. We were able to run a fast pace without hesitating throughout our full stint.”
Rojas and Pruett battled with the No. 59 Brumos Porsche Riley of pole-winning driver Darren Law and his teammate David Donohue for most of the race. Law won the pole in Friday’s qualifying session and was the first of nine Daytona Prototypes that obliterated a track record that was set just five months ago in the 2009 season-ending race at the track.
Eight GT competitors also broke the existing class track record in qualifying using the 2010 specification P Zeros. The group included the No. 69 Mazda, with Assentato posting the fourth-fastest time. He started the race while Segal took over for the final stint and took the GT victory.
“We had a really good day,” says Segal. “We took a really big gamble on a more aggressive setup that would probably wear the tires quicker but use more of the Pirelli’s potential. The balance of the car was great going from day into night, and the car and the Pirellis were phenomenal the whole time.”
Next up for Pirelli and the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series is the April 8-10 Porsche 250 at Barber Motorsports Park. The race can be seen live on the Speed Channel on Sunday, April 10 at 1:30 p.m. ET.
For more information, visit www.us.pirelli.com.
