Stevenson Motorsports is ready to take on the challenge of the Rolex 24 At Daytona this weekend, and the team worked to make the most of a soggy start to the race weekend on Thursday.

With a pair of practice sessions ahead of the 15-minute qualifying session both significantly hampered by all-day precipitation, the team didn’t get nearly the laps on the 3.56-mile circuit that they had been hoping for. Saturday’s race marks the opening round of the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech championship as the 2015 IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Champions look to get acquainted with their duo of new GTD class entries.

The No. 6 Stevenson Motorsports Audi R8 LMS starts the 54th running of the Rolex 24 At Daytona from 15th position on the grid with their driver lineup of Andrew Davis, Robin Liddell, Matt Bell, and Lawson Aschenbach. A power steering issue prevented the No. 9 Stevenson Motorsports Audi R8 LMS from making a qualifying run, but the all-star lineup of Dion von Moltke, Kenny Habul, Boris Said, and Tristan Vautier looks to make strong moves up the order from their 21st starting position.

“Today didn’t go quite as we had planned or hoped,” said Team Manager, Mike Johnson following the soggy qualifying session. “We had a power steering issue in the No. 9 car and had to pull the gearbox to fix it. We missed the end of qualifying by just five seconds, but we’re very confident that we are ready to go tonight for night practice and in practice tomorrow. We know we have fast cars in the dry and we know we have good drivers, so we are just going to keep working and moving forward.”

“It’s a disappointing day for us in general just because we struggled with track time,” said Davis. “We got very little running and those qualifying laps were actually my first laps this weekend! That’s always very difficult especially with the biggest race of the season to hop out there in a car I’ve never driven in the wet and really in treacherous conditions.”

The rain that had saturated the facility since Wednesday kept the newly falling downpours from draining quickly on Thursday, with lots of standing water for the drivers to deal with. 

“The track was quite bad, it’s been several years since I’ve raced here with that much water on the track,” said Davis. “For me I was just trying to learn the car. I had to put the ego aside a little bit and realize that my job was just to run the 15 minutes and gather as much data as I could and not worry so much about the starting position. It will certainly make the race a little bit more difficult; it’s always better to be up front although it’s a 24-hour race. It’s nice to start trying to control the stints early.”

The team has experience in the 24 Hour, and will look to move up through the race to add to Stevenson Motorsports 13 wins in GT competition with a big result on Sunday. 

“We’ll have to be smart with how we work our way up through the traffic,” said Davis. “Hopefully from this point on we’ll start to maximize our track time and get the data and time we need because both Robin (Liddell) and Matt (Bell) haven’t even driven yet. We need to get out there and turn some laps. But we’ve got the best crew in the business and we love our new Audi so we’re going to keep pushing, learning, and hopefully the sun will shine because we are better right now and ready the on dry set up as we really made a lot of good progress at the Roar, so I’m looking forward to moving to Saturday.” 

The team utilized Thursday night’s practice session to gain more data on the car heading into the big Rolex 24 endurance event and will look to capitalize on one more practice session on Friday ahead of the drop of the green flag Saturday at 2:40 PM (ET).

The race broadcast will be split between FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports 2 and IMSA TV, with coverage beginning at 2:00 PM (ET) on FOX Sports 1. Be sure to like Stevenson Motorsports on Facebook (facebook.com/StevensonMotorsport) and follow them on Twitter (@stevensonmotor) for LIVE updates throughout the race!