The Rolex 24 at Daytona featured some unintentional comedy during the overnight radio broadcast when it was announced Falken Tire was on the lookout for a team to run with for the rest of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship season.

 

Seemingly oblivious to the ongoing partnership between the Japanese tire brand and Walker Racing, team owner Derrick Walker was among those who struggled to find the humor in the oversight.

 

Coming off a mighty ALMS GT class win for the team at Petit Le Mans in October, Falken, Porsche and Walker confirmed the program would receive the first customer 911 RSR to compete in the TUDOR Championship’s GT Le Mans category, but due to timing constraints, Falken would miss the season opener at Daytona.

 

As Walker shares with RACER, the team is busy getting its new Porsche ready to make its public debut at next week’s two-day official test at Sebring, thanks to the extra efforts put in by his team manager and crew members at Porsche’s Motorsport base in Germany.

 

“Phil Howard and some of our boys have been over in Weissach helping to put the new car together, and the factory has been very obliging, along with their factory guys, to get the car ready and we’re on target to be at the Sebring test,” he said.

 

Falken will have its winning duo of Wolf Henzler and Bryan Sellers at the controls this season, with factory Porsche driver Marco Holzer joining the team for the Sebring 12 Hours. As much as the team wanted to compete at Daytona, Walker says there was little that could be done to alter the timeline they were on.

 

“Quite simply, we couldn’t go because the amount of cars and work that Porsche had going on, which is good news for them, and we understood this when we signed up for the customer RSR program,” Walker acknowledged. “Yes, we could have brought out an older car to run, but it also would have been a challenge to get a new tire ready in time for Daytona.

 

“And, to go and build a tire for just Daytona and with an older car that handles differently than the 991 was never going to be the best way to spend our budget. We said, ‘Let’s take a step back and regroup to really put all the effort into the 991 when it comes.’ So being really prepared for Sebring is our main focus. It’s a case of that’s the best option when we looked at what options we had.”

 

By missing Daytona and all of the pre-season testing opportunities, the Falken Porsche outfit will have a massive learning curve to overcome in a relatively short period. The Rolex 24-winning factory 911 RSRs could help in that department, in a small way, with general chassis setup input, but with those cars using Michelin rubber, Walker’s team will need to tailor the car’s setup needs to Falken’s product.

 

“We obviously hope we get up to speed right away,” added Walker. “I know in Japan they’re working really hard and doing a lot of different tire options. So they have the feedback from the Weissach testing and the Daytona stuff, so they know a bit of the difference, or a good part of what the difference, is between the 997 and the 991 we’ve used and there’s as much work being done as possible to extrapolate how that will show up in setup differences for our tires. But, let’s face it: we will be a race behind and a lot of practice, a lot of testing behind. But that’s it.

 

“The choice to continue on with Porsche was the right one, and Porsche wanted to have us, which I think you’ll find the Falken car will be the only 911 RSR customer car in the U.S. So for us, that was a big honor to be able to get on that program because the relationship with Porsche every year gets better and better. We’ll have a steep hill to climb at Sebring, but I expect it all to pay off throughout the rest of the season.”