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Oryx Racing gears up for the second race

The latest race for the Abu Dhabi based team, will take place at the Barber Motorsports Park circuit in Birmingham, Alabama and is the next stage in its 2012 racing campaign.

The team, with just one race behind them in the all new, Audi R8 Grand-AM, will come up against some of the world’s most renowned sports car teams.

Commenting on the upcoming race, Team Principal and Number One Driver Humaid Al Masaood said, “The first race at Daytona was all about gathering as much performance data as possible which gave us a good knowledge base for developing the car throughout the season.

“The car has been fitted with new dampers in this first phase of developments, which will be rolled out at Barber Motorsports Park where we aim to be more competitive. Our goal is always to run without mistakes at a consistent pace and work with the Audi engineers to further develop the car.”

Barber Motorsports Park is considered, one of North America’s finest road courses and with a 2.38 mile racing circuit is 45 feet wide, with 17 turns and elevation changes of more than 80 feet.

“I’ve never raced at the Barber Motorsports Park.” said Emirati Al Masaood. “I have friends who live in the lovely state of Alabama and I know how much they love their racing, it should be a thrill to race the challenging circuit in front of an enthusiastic and well informed crowd”

Having had very limited time with the new car prior to the Daytona race, the team focused on gathering information on the Audi R8 Grand-AM in preparation for Barber Motorsports Park. After the first race, the car was put into a kinetic rig which helped the team understand more about how the suspension and damping work. Based on the data acquired from the rig, the car was fitted with upgraded Ohlins dampers to improve the ride and handling.

Following a successful season in the American Le Mans Series last year, where they won one race and scored several podiums, Al Masaood and number two driver Steven Kane, finished in 32^nd place out of 44 cars in the GT class of the first race of this season, the Rolex 24 at Daytona. With less than 1,000-miles of testing on the clock before the race, the team aims to continue powering their way through the ranks as the season progresses.

Oryx Racing arrived in Alabama on Tuesday 27^th March to begin preparations for the race at Barber Motorsports Park. The race weekend will begin on the 30^th of March and end on the 31^st.