Alex Brundle's quest for victory in a day-night race continues with the King's Lynn racer poised to make his debut in the Daytona 24 Hours at the end of the month.
The Norfolk driver, who finished up as runner-up in the LMP2 category of last year's World Endurance Championship, has joined the American Le Mans Series championship winning Muscle Milk/Pickett Racing squad.
'I am excited to go over to Daytona and race in the Rolex 24. The chance to fight for overall victory with Muscle Milk/Pickett Racing and Nissan is a fantastic next step in my career,' Brundle said.
'The squad have a tremendous record in American sportscar racing so to have the chance to join such a prestigious team is excellent. I am looking forward to making the most of it.'
Brundle will be joining Muscle Milk regular drivers Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr racing a Nissan powered ORECA 03 in the season opener for the new TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, an amalgamation of the previous AMLS LMP2's and Daytona Prototype series.
On his arrival at the legendary venue Brundle was impressed, saying: 'The place is mega. I didn't really quite clock the scale of the place, probably because I have never been to an oval circuit before, other than Rockingham in the UK. The scale of this place is incredible. I can't wait to get it out there.
'Klaus and Lucas have driven in the American series for a quite a while now so I can learn quickly from them. I am looking forward to the challenge.'
Last weekend the Florida venue hosted pre-event testing with Brundle positing a competitive lap time on his first acquaintance of the combined Oval/Road course, with Pickett Racing tweeting: 'Alex got up to speed nicely with a personal best of 1min 41.766sec.'
Day two saw Brundle post the tenth quickest time overall in the first session with a 1min 40.692sec lap with Graff fastest of the quartet of drivers in the first night session to end up in tenth place once more while day three saw Graff post the eighth quickest lap time.
'Overall, I think we had a decent test, especially in terms of building a body of data about what we can change on the Muscle Milk ORECA/Nissan and what effect it can have.
'In terms of ultimate performance, we didn't move that far forward but that was not really the goal this week,' Brundle added.
'The team has been very welcoming. Greg Pickett has made me feel like I have been here a whole lot longer than I have, so that's been really nice and I have enjoyed being here a lot.
'We need to improve for the race, but we know the areas where we can do that and I am looking forward to coming back in a couple of weeks and would like to say thanks to Darren Cox of Nissan and Pickett Racing for giving me this opportunity.'
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