Ferdie:

First of all, a very warm welcome indeed. Very happy to hear from you via this thread. Guess there will be plenty of questions coming up in the near future. Until then, could you shed some light on the qualities of your drivers? Ragginger and Henzler have been well known in the Carrera and Supercup and, being Porsche works drivers, seem to make a very good job. How is it possible to receive works drivers from Porsche? I guess providing a great team makes that decision very easy...

Smiley

I had a sit down with Program Manager Derrick Walker this afternoon, so I thought I'd also get an official quote from him regarding Bryan Sellers and Wolf Henzler. Here are his thoughts:

"They’re two very different individuals. They have different personalities and they’ve arrived at Falken motorsports from different directions.  The good thing about both of them is they’re ideally suited for sports car GT racing, for more than one reason. One of the main reasons they’re ideal for us as a team is they work really well together. The like similar aspects of the car set up, they describe the car in different ways but their combined input is very helpful. They’re tireless workers. They never give up. Not even when we’re maybe not running as quick as we should be. They never give up on trying to improve. They’re just two racers. They’re professional. There’s not much of a separation between the two of them. If there is a difference, it’s more from experience. Wolf has come with a different experience level than Bryan, but they complement each other when you wouldn’t sense it because they work so well together in the process of not only driving but helping the team to understand how to improve the tires, the car, and maximize our potential. Although they’re quite different, they have a lot of similarities in the way they deal with the job of racing in the job of co drivers for Falken Motorsports.

As for Wolf, I can’t think of another driver in the field that is so hard to pass or so hard to get by. He can pass people in so many places that you didn’t think were possible. He’s a devil. There’s just no way he can’t driver around somebody. Or if the pack is coming down on him, and he’s at the end of his run and he’s not able to stay ahead, there’s nobody better than to have holding up the pack until it’s time for us to pit so we don’t lose so much ground. They’re both very similar and we’re fortunate to have both of them.

Of the two, Bryan is extremely valuable when we do a lot of tire testing. Bryan as an ornate amount of feedback. His recalling a lot of small details is quite exceptional. Wolf can be that detailed, but it’s not as spontaneous. Whereas Bryan, it just rips out of him. When you’re doing tire testing, it’s fractions. It’s very small amounts: little bits of grip, little bits of behavior changes. It’s not a ‘wham bam, oh we’re two seconds quicker’ it’s one tenth at a time. Feedback from a driver that can give you a lot of detail, even at small increments, that’s very important. For a Falken tire development program, Bryan has been a big asset there. His feedback and approach to the job is coming from an open wheel perspective, it’s very detailed.

They’re both driving the car wherever they have to drive it to make it quicker. They change their lines, breaking points, and a lot of aspects of how they approach a corner to get around it. If it means running a different line, they’ll do it. Some drivers get stuck in a rut and never do that. These guys are always searching"