Starworks Motorsports has doubled down for the 2012 endurance racing season. The Florida-based team will be competing in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series, as it has since 2010, and will also be racing in the World Endurance Championship.
Starworks will be running two Riley-Ford Daytona Prototypes in the Rolex Series, with Drivers Enzo Potolicchio and Ryan Dalziel in the No. 8 car and Alex Popow and Lucas Luhr in the No. 2—the same basic lineups which earned the team second and tenth-place finishes in the 50th Anniversary Rolex 24 at Daytona last weekend.
The team has also entered an HPD ARX-03b in the LMP2 class of the World Endurance Challenge, again with Ryan Dalziel and Enzo Potolicchio behind the wheel. The ream has yet to take possession of the car, but it has set up a new facility in Cardiff, Wales as a base of operations for its WEC efforts after the opening round at Sebring on March 17.
The two schedules only offer one conflict: the WEC Bahrain round on Sept. 29 and the Rolex Lime Rock race on Sept. 30. A spokesperson for Starworks said the driver line-ups for those races would be worked out at some future date. The decision where to commit Dalziel and Portolicchio will probably be based on which series the team had the best chance of winning.
The WEC entry was a surprise to most endurance racing followers; even team owner Peter Barron admitted on the team’s website, “It seemed like such a far-fetched dream even to contemplate doing the WEC for 2012.
“Pushing ourselves, we looked at our assets and our potential, and we thought ‘We are just a few key hires away from having the right people in place.’
“The most important thing is that we have everything in position not just to compete, but to challenge. We are not there to just participate, we are there to compete for a championship. Our team has a tremendous wealth of experience running high-tech cars, and we are up to the challenge.
