Good to see Nissan fielding a solid number of cars at this year's opening event at Daytona. With the race occurring early this afternoon the 2014 Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season gets underway.
There appear to be two, two car teams for this year. In the top end GS class we have the Doran Racing/Tim Bell Racing 370Z effort while in the ST (street tuner) class we have the Skullcandy Nissan Altima team which has added a second car for the '14 season.
Qualifying for today's event took place on Thursday and saw some solid results for the Nissans.
In GS the Tim Bell driven #28 370Z qualified 11th of 26 while Brad Jaeger put the #14 Z in the 15th position. Given they only had two or three laps of qualifying, I'm not sure how much this says. Additionally, every other car in the GS class is a V8 (except for a lone Subaru STi) the Zs will have their work cut out for them keeping up on the oval stretches of the Daytona circuit which is likely the track that least suits them of any on the schedule.
Down in the ST class, the Skullcandy team put its #33 Altima into the 4th position (of 35) off the line behind the hands of Bryan Heitkotter, the 2011 Nissan Playstation Academy winner and by now well diversified driver. The #34 Altima of Johnny Canavas didn't fare quite so well but qualified 25th. The race will be broadcast on Fox Sports 2 at 6PM Eastern today...so if you get that channel...tune in and look for some fast (hopefully!) Nissans.
