Rast Narrowly Misses top-10 for APR Motorsport in Stacked GT Qualifying

APR Motorsport Press Release

Team will run Live Blog throughout Rolex 24 at Daytona

January 25, 2012 (Daytona Beach, Fla.) – A strong qualifying session highlighted a busy day for the APR Motorsport team at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday.
In the stacked thirty-four car GT field Rene Rast drove to 11th place in the day’s qualifying session in the no. 52 APR Audi R8 Grand-Am. Such was the depth of the GT field at the Rolex 24 at Daytona that Rast’s time was less than a second behind the pole sitting car. Rast, a defending GT-class winner at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, will partner with Ian Baas, Marc Basseng, and Frank Stippler in the no. 52 APR Audi R8 Grand-Am.

“I am pretty satisfied with the car and with qualifying the APR Audi R8 in 11th position,” said Rast. “It isn’t as fast in qualifying as we would like, but. I think we have a good car for the race. On Saturday, we will see.”

In the sister no. 51 APR Audi R8 Grand-Am, Matt Bell qualified in 27th position as he and the team continued to work on the setup of the Audi. Bell will be partnered with David Empringham, Alex Figge, John Farano and Dave Lacey for the twenty-four hour contest.

“We went in a certain direction for qualifying and it didn’t work out for us,” said Bell. “The car was really good, except for in a couple of spots on the track. As strong as this field is, you can’t really have a weakness anywhere and hope to be competitive. But now we know which direction to go and we have plenty of practice to get it right before Saturday.”

To give fans behind-the-scenes access throughout the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the team will run a Live Blog throughout the race. Stephen Hooks, team owner of APR Motorsport, will be online throughout the race from APR’s pits on the front straightaway of Daytona International Speedway to answer questions from Audi fans around the world. APR’s Live Blog will be available at SPEED2.com, starting at 3:00 PM ET on Saturday, January 26.

About APR Motorsport
APR LLC is an automotive engineering firm operating a 36,000 sq. ft. performance campus in Opelika, Ala. APR was founded in 1997 with a corporate philosophy of Integrity, Excellence and Innovation. APR’s sole mission is to provide the highest quality and most highly-engineered aftermarket performance parts available for Audi, Volkswagen, SEAT and Skoda vehicles. Learn more at facebook.com/APRMotorsport, and on twitter (@GoAPR).

Photo credit: APR Motorsport