Following a year of development and collaboration, Toyo Tires and Flying Lizard Motorsports took the overall win in dominant fashion this weekend at North America’s longest endurance racing event — the USAF 25-Hours of Thunderhill.
Running on Toyo Proxes Slicks, the No. 45 Toyo Tires / Flying Lizard Audi R8 LMS covered a distance of 1,973 miles in 690 laps and finished with a winning margin of 35 laps over the second place finisher.
Flying Lizard Motorsports drivers Darren Law, Johannes van Overbeek, Guy Cosmo and Tomonobu Fujii; each drove double stints in order to beat the field of 58 cars while also winning Class ES. The race began Saturday morning on a dry track with Law at the wheel. By the exit of Turn 1, he had gone from sixth position to third place overall, setting the tone for the race. The final 12-hours of the race was subjected to wet weather conditions, alternating from a light sprinkle to heavy rain throughout the night and into the next morning. That, combined with varying closing speeds when overtaking the multiple classes of cars; required constant alertness by the drivers of the Toyo Tires / Flying Lizard entry.
“In It to Win It has been our mantra since we first announced our partnership with Flying Lizard, and we delivered on that promise,” said Marc Sanzenbacher, senior manager, motorsports, Toyo Tire U.S.A. Corp. “The combination of our Toyo Proxes race slicks and the Audi R8 LMS handled every challenge this race could throw at us, and we had a flawless performance. We look forward to more development and successes in 2016!"
"What an amazing event. This was the first official race we have entered since we began our relationship with Toyo Tires,” said Law. “We spent this entire season working with Toyo on the development of their racing slick and the tires were phenomenal all race; we had no issues. Obviously doing a race like this isn’t anything new for Flying Lizard Motorsports, the drivers did a great job and we brought the car home in perfect condition. It was a challenging race, we had rain, we had dry, it was dark for almost 14 hours and the closing speeds between all of the different classes was big. The priority for us was to just run a consistent pace and stay out of trouble. To come home with not only a class win, but a win overall was everything we could have wanted. We are looking forward to continuing this relationship and defending our win next season."
“It was good to be back under the Flying Lizard umbrella for this race. I’m very impressed by Toyo. When Darren (Law) called and asked if I wanted to do this thing, you never know about tire programs and how they’re going to go. However, I have to say, it completely blew me away,” said van Overbeek. “We didn’t have a single puncture. The performance was great, the balance was great. The rain tires were unbelievable. We had a little bit of everything to try with these tires and they always came out on top. Hats off to Toyo Tires for delivering a really good tire. Hats off to Flying Lizard for putting together yet another race winning car.”
