| Post-Driving, Sellers Steering DXDT Racing’s Complex, New IMSA Voyage March 4, 2025By David PhillipsIMSA Wire Service |
| DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – “Learn by doing.” It’s advice offered by sages from Aristotle and Confucius to Thomas Jefferson, Dale Carnegie and Richard Branson, to name a few. It’s advice being put into action by many a young team in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, including 2025 newcomers DXDT Racing. DXDT made its initial WeatherTech Championship series start in the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class in January’s Rolex 24 At Daytona. Suffice to say the team’s GTD debut was a mixed bag given that the No. 36 Corvette Z06 GT3.R qualified 16th in class and was laid low by a fire just past the midway point of the race. On the other hand, drivers Charlie Eastwood, Salih Yoluc, Alec Udell and Pipo Derani had worked their way into the top five in class – and even led a lap – before their race reached a premature conclusion. The good news is that, like their competitors, DXDT will have had eight weeks to regroup and prepare for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, March 15. The bad news? Like their competitors, DXDT will have had eight weeks to regroup and prepare for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. DXDT’s program manager Bryan Sellers explains. “The break gives us time to learn from things that happened at Daytona,” he said. “I wouldn’t call them mistakes. I’d prefer to think in terms of us benefiting from the experiences of actually racing to continue our program’s development. “The Rolex 24 was a new series, a new car and the first time a lot of people were working together. And there are some things you just can’t learn without doing them. You can practice and practice but there’s no replacement for actual exposure to real, live race conditions.” |
| Sellers knows whereof he speaks. Like his team, he’s facing a steep learning curve in his first season as DXDT program manager after a remarkably successful career as a race driver that saw him earn a pair of WeatherTech Championship GTD championships (2018, 2023) and the 2020 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup (co-driving with Madison Snow) with Paul Miller Racing. Additionally, Sellers raced a DXDT Corvette in GT World Challenge before accepting team owner David Askew’s offer to join general manager Erin Gahagan in orchestrating the organization’s WeatherTech Championship GTD program. Sellers’ first “actual exposure to real, real live race conditions” at Daytona as DXDT’s program manager was, predictably, an eye opener. “I truly enjoyed it,” he says. “Looking back, for sure there were moments when I wanted to be out there driving. But I got a great deal of satisfaction helping to formulate the driver, pit stop, fuel and tire strategies. Of course, I contributed to that driving for Paul Miller Racing, but to have a larger part in it I found extremely rewarding. “Erin and I have very complementary roles leading up to everything in the race. She’s been amazing to work with; her depth of knowledge in how this all comes together and works is pretty incredible. I feel pretty fortunate. When we get into the race my responsibility moves more towards the operational side, being able to see what happens in pit lane but also strategy and working with the engineering department, driver line-ups and rotations, pit stop rotations. “Most places have a structure where a strategist or a lead engineer makes those calls. On our side we’ve structured it so that Zach Rischar, our lead engineer, has the final decision. But until then it’s a pretty open conversation as to what our options are and what we think is best. For me, I can offer alternate thoughts in those areas, provide a different point of view that’s not from an engineering side and more from a driver’s side.” Absorbing all the action exclusively from atop the pit stand was a new experience for Sellers. |
| “The perspectives are very different,” he said. “There are often times when it’s easier to make a call from inside the car. You see things sometimes very clearly based on the tire degradation, where you’re at in terms of track position, how easy or how difficult it is to pass, how the traffic outlay is coming. Often there are conversations back to pit lane where you say, ‘If we’re in our pit window, now would be a good time to stop.’ From the timing stand that’s a very easy decision to go along with: ‘This is what the driver wants, it does fit into our window. Let’s go!’ “You have a very different picture on the stand. You don’t get all those visuals and feelings you have inside the car. You don’t feel how the tire degradation is going, how the car is going with the fuel load burning off. (Instead) you’re often making decisions based on what you see from the pit stand, how the race is playing out in your eyes and what other people are doing, and you’re reacting or not reacting to their calls. It’s a very different game.” Speaking of different games, along with the challenges of readying for Sebring, DXDT is knee deep in preparations to run a new Bosch electronic hand-brake control system on its Corvette at Long Beach in April, the first of half a dozen sprint races in which Robert Wickens is slated to compete alongside a to-be-announced co-driver. Wickens was partially paralyzed as the result of an IndyCar crash in 2018 but returned to racing the past several seasons, driving a Bryan Herta Autosport Hyundai Elantra N to the 2023 Michelin Pilot Challenge Touring Car (TCR) class title. Announced officially in September, the new Bosch system is anticipated to provide a quantum leap in “driver friendliness” over the mechanical hand-brake system Wickens has used to such effect in the past. He raced the new system twice in his Hyundai Elantra to cap off the 2024 Michelin Pilot Challenge campaign. Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Tommy Milner has already conducted straight line testing of the system in a Corvette in January, and the next step is anticipated when Wickens takes the wheel of the DXDT Corvette at Sebring the Monday and Tuesday after the Twelve Hours. But as Sellers will be the first to tell you, while much will be gleaned on those test days, the real learning will come when Wickens and the DXDT Corvette hit the track in competition. |
