"We can still find a bit more performance from the car" - Ross Gunn on the hopes of the Aston Martin Valkyrie's Daytona debut

Credit: Aston Martin Racing (AMR)

The Aston Martin Valkyrie will make it's Daytona 24 Hour debut this weekend, after sitting out last years edition of the event in favor of more development time.

Since that point, Aston Martin and The Heart Of Racing (THOR) have gone through a roller-coaster ride filled with ups and downs. The main takeaway though? The fact that the trajectory was upward, they started the season with a lack of pace and broken doors in the World Endurance Championship round in Qatar, and ended the season on the podium at Petit Le Mans.

Ahead of Daytona though, there is a humble feeling surrounding the crew of the sole Valkyrie entry. After the ROAR test sessions last weekend, Ross Gunn felt that they hadn't extracted everything from the car, but was hopeful of what the race weekend itself held.

"It’s been a challenging ROAR. Though, qualifying for our first Rolex is something to be excited about. We can still find a bit more performance from the car, but that’s part of the evolution of a new car and is something we are enjoying. Come race day hopefully we will be fighting towards the front." said Gunn.

Roman De Angelis, Alex Riberas and Marco Sorenson - Gunn's teammates - all echoed the Britons comments of a tough ROAR weekend. Technical issues impacted the potential of the testing for the team.

"Definitely not a smooth ROAR for us due to some technical issues on the car throughout the four days of testing. With that being said the team did an amazing job checking some important boxes for the upcoming race.

"We now go into the race weekend confident that we have a car to fight for 24 hours and hopefully be a strong contender in our first 24 hours of Daytona" added De Angelis.

The lack of running with the car last weekend showed in yesterday's qualifying session too, the No.23 Valkyrie set the slowest lap time of all of the GTPs, almost a second and a half off the eventual pole time.

Credit: Aston Martin Racing (AMR)

On the other side of the garage though, it was all celebrations. Zachaire Robichon delivered pole position to the No.27 GTD THOR Aston Martin Vantage GT3, with a lap time that would have put him second on the GTD Pro grid, if there was no class split.

Robichon was sure to keep reality in the forefront though. "Ultimately it’s a great place to start a 24 hour race, but as we know it’s not necessarily the deciding factor."

Robichon, alongside teammates Mattia Drudi, Eduardo 'Dudu' Barrichello and Tom Gamble have all eyes forward on the race.

The GTP crew will be following with the same attitude. 24 hours of racing is a long time, with unpredictability around every corner of the Daytona International Speedway.