senor honda

[h=2]Panoz starts last Avezzano test before PWC opener[/h] Marshall Pruett

Ian James and the Panoz Racing team have started final preparations for their Pirelli World Challenge series debut with the new Avezzano GTS. Built on the same platform as the Panoz Esperante, the Avezzano, which is working toward GT4 homologation, will head to St. Petersburg next week to start its championship campaign in the GTS class once James and the team complete a two-day test at Road Atlanta.
"It's very rewarding, not just for me, but for all the guys and girls who've worked on it over the winter," James told RACER after spending the morning in the No. 50 entry. "They put this car together in a very short period of time. I visited the shop [in early January] and we just had a roll cage sitting on the floor and yesterday the car was 99 percent complete. It's great to get a Panoz racecar back on the track and looking forward to the year."
Preparing the Avezzano GTS for short spring races in PWC is different than anything the company has done in the past with its Panoz GT cars that were designed for endurance competition.
"Some of the components are more sprint race, but a lot of the basics are the same," James said. "Today is mostly a roll out, checking all the systems, the clearances, the thermal properties of the car, and then we'll start to get into the setup work. The Panoz organization, honestly, has never done a GTS car before, so a lot of it's learning for us. All the theoretical math that has gone into the car, we need to make sure it's real on the race track. We're just starting to scratch the surface on an exciting new project."