It hasn't been the start of the season we had hoped for, Long admitted. We did a lot of off-season testing and we have really struggled in most of the practice sessions so far this year. At
Daytona it was an uphill battle, and so was the beginning of the weekend at Mexico City. We were able to salvage good finishes and we are still relatively strong in the points, but we need to get a little further up the field to be in contention for podiums and maximum point paying positions.
Our optimism going into the season was very high, Bergmeister concurred. The team did a lot of testing in the off season. The AJR guys had a year under their belt with the car and the circuits. In Daytona we had some issues, and in Mexico City things didn't go according to plan either. We were able to come away with a top five finish in Mexico City, but we really hoped for more by this point. We are still chasing the right car set-up with the revised Hoosier tyre, but the team remains optimistic and we have some really good tracks coming up.
Team owner Alex Job was focusing on the positives ahead of the weekend, and was confident the race would mark a turnaround in fortunes for the squad.
We are looking for history to repeat itself, he claimed. Last year we got our first Grand-Am win at Miami, and we are anticipating the same result this year. Though we've had our challenges early on this season, we hope those are behind us now and we can focus on defending our title this weekend.
