Renger van der Zande, Konica Minolta Cadillac driver quote ahead of 24h Daytona 21.01.2019: RENGER VAN DER ZANDE, driver, No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R You bookended last season by winning the pole for the Rolex 24 in your first qualifying attempt with your new team, then securing the victory at the Petit Le Mans fi

RENGER VAN DER ZANDE,
driver, No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R



 
You bookended last season by winning the pole for the Rolex 24 in your first qualifying attempt with your new team, then securing the victory at the Petit Le Mans finale with a dramatic last-lap pass. Safe to say it’s been a long wait for you to get back to racing?

 

“I’m happy to go racing again and happy to be back in the car. For sure, Wayne has brought us some incredible things to this team, including the pair of drivers who will be joining us. I’m very pleased with everything that we do here. It’s a bit of a change this year with the new Michelin tire, a bit of a change in terms of setup and so on. But we learned a good bit at the test a few weeks ago.



Last year, we started out with the pole position but not a good ending to the race due to the issues that we had, and it turned out to be kind of an up-and-down year with a couple of DNFs. But when you consider we still ended up just seven points out of the championship, if you look at the season we had, all the races where we didn’t have trouble, we executed very well and that’s what we’re going to take into this season.



For me, it’s a season that I’m working with the team for the second year in a row and I think it’s a big advantage, where last year it was all new. I’m definitely happy to be heading back to Daytona.”




 
How was the Roar Before the 24 test from your standpoint?


 
“It was an interesting test, ticking all the boxes that we had on our list. All the drivers had some quality time in the car. My personal thing was to get used to the Michelin tires and I think they are very easy to adjust to. I was happy to see the average pace between all of our drivers.


We’ve done some fine-tuning with various things since the test, and we have work to do like everybody else when practice starts this week. But overall I’m excited about our chances.



We have Fernando Alonso – he’s a legend. You can feel that in everything he does. Heading to Daytona with him, and also with Kamui as a teammate – two ex-Formula One stars – I think is very special.”





Laz Denes-  photo LAT