The highly-respected Brazilian-born, UK-based Tommy Erdos kicked off the 2006 season by joining Eddie Cheever Racing for the Rolex Daytona 24 Hour race starting January 26.
Adding to Tommy’s enthusiasm was the fact that in his team were Mike Newton and Warren Hughes - plus Swede Stefan Johansson - with whom, in a RML MG Lola, he scored his first championship win of the 2005 season in the final round of the Le Mans Endurance Series at Instanbul Park in Turkey.
Although the team is new to the series and Cheever Racing will be competing in a Lexus Crawford for the first time, he rated their chances as “pretty good”, before adding: “But there are some very good drivers in the field this year. For sure we are going to be learning a lot as a team.”
At the Autosport International show, Tommy learned something about BRD’s Pro RaceTrainer, which he acclaimed to be “a good driver-training system.”
He added: “This simulator would be good to use before you get into a racecar because it gets your mind round the circuit.
“The steering is very good, pretty realistic. It had good weight on it. It was easy to put the car on the line that you wanted. Most (simulation) steering wheels are very vague and the car seems to wallow around, and you can’t seem to pin it down.
“But with your steering I thought it was very precise and very easy to find a line and actually run near the edge of the circuit without feeling the car was going to go off. It gives you confidence that you are in control of the car.”
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