By Jeff Olson
It’s been awhile since Ryan Dalziel has been in a race car. He’s not alone.
Dalziel will team with John Farano in the No. 8 Tower Motorsport by Starworks ORECA LMP2 07 for Saturday’s Cadillac Grand Prix of Sebring. He hasn’t raced the car since the Rolex 24 in January; the LMP2 class didn’t compete July 4 at Daytona.
The season was interrupted after the Rolex 24 by the coronavirus pandemic. The postponement and cancellation of events turned drivers’ and teams’ plans upside down.
“It’s obviously been an interesting few months for everybody,” Dalziel said. “We had just wrapped up a two-day test at Sebring a couple of weeks before (the originally scheduled Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts in March) before all of this happened. We haven’t done anything to the car since then. … We’ve just been monitoring the situation. We’ve been prepared to come back to racing.”
Kyle Masson, who will team with Cameron Cassels in the Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07, experienced what Dalziel has — no on-track work in the car for months. He stayed sharp with simulator work and virtual racing, but he’s looking forward to live racing.
“Getting in the actual car, getting the feel of it, getting our head wrapped around it — that’s going to be what we’re focused on,” Masson said.