Flying Lizard Motorsports joins a handful of other full-season American Le Mans Series entrants making an entry into this year's 50th anniversary Rolex 24 at Daytona with Monday's announcement the team will run a Porsche GT3 Cup car in the GT class.
The Lizards won the overall pole in a Porsche Riley Daytona Prototype a year ago but now move back to their GT roots. The last GT entry for the team came as a joint entry with TRG in 2010, with a second-place result in class.
“This is such a big event,” said team strategist Thomas Blam. “We've never won here, but we've come close: after taking a break for a few years we came back to finish second in 2010, and last year had a super fast car. Of course, I don't think we will ever forget our first year here in 2004 (the last time Rocky drove with us) when we came within seven seconds of winning in class.”
This year, the team's No. 45 entry features Jorg Bergmeister, Patrick Long, Mike Rockenfeller and team principal Seth Neiman. Rockenfeller rejoins the team for the first time since 2004, the team's first year running a Porsche at the Rolex. The other three are full-season drivers in ALMS.
Last week the team also confirmed a similar lineup for its two ALMS Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs in 2012 specs, with Bergmeister and Long driving together for a fourth consecutive season in the team's No. 45 car with Neiman and Marco Holzer, who drove a partial season in 2011, confirmed for the full 2012 campaign in place of Darren Law. Law should continue as the team's third driver for endurance races and in non-conflicting Rolex weekends if need be.
Other 2011 ALMS teams confirmed for Rolex 24 entries include Extreme Speed Motorsports, Risi Competizione and Alex Job Racing, with Oryx Racing and Black Swan Racing also likely to confirm programs shortly.