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Matt Campbell will start on the front row for Round 7 of the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at a repaved Road America.
Campbell was able to get a feel for the grip level of the resurfaced circuit in testing in June before missing out on pole to the Cadillac of Pipo Derani by 0.068s in the #7 Penske Porsche Motorsports 963 this morning.
“I’ve been racing for a number of years at Road America, and it is a completely different track,” he said. “I feel like it’s only going to improve over time.”
“At the moment, the track is extremely smooth,” Campbell said.
“It is very temperature sensitive, it feels, and it’s very hard to get the car in the correct working window at the right time.”
“It is going to be really challenging this weekend to find that balance and direction as the track evolves during each session,” he said.
After six races, the Warwick, Queensland native finds himself and his co-driver, Felipe Nasr, in seventh place in the GTP driver standings.
The #7 Porsche has shown pace at times this season but has been hampered by technical issues.
“We’ve had a little bad luck finishing races with some DNFs,” Campbell said. “We’ve had some technical issues pop up along the way, which is affecting us a little bit.”
“Unfortunately, we’ve just never had anything to show for it, which is a little bit frustrating.”
The 28-year-old Porsche factory driver is optimistic that the fortunes of the #7 Porsche will turn around this weekend after successful tests at both Road American and Indianapolis.
“We had a very successful test,” he said about the Indy test. “I feel like we learned a lot, and it was our most successful test to date.”
“We were fast the entire two days, and in the last session, we didn’t necessarily show we were fast but still felt like we were one of the fastest cars.”
“It puts us in a better situation, not only for the Indy race weekend but also for this weekend in Road America,” Campbell said.
“With this car, we are learning so much all the time,” he said. “There is so much software and development going on in the background every single race weekend.”
With four races remaining, Campbell knows the season can be turned around and is banking on it all to come together at Road America.
“Hopefully, we can end the year on a bit of a high and try and try to get a podium or two towards the end after having a bit of a tough run.”
The IMSA SportsCar Weekend starts at 11:10 local time on Sunday August 6/02:10 AEST Monday August 7.
