Thursday, July 21, 2016 – Fresno, CA – The PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports team are headed to Lakeville, Connecticut for the eighth round of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship, the Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock Park. The team saw great success at the 1.474-mile track with a win in 2015. Local favorite Tom Kimber-Smith along with his teammate Robert Alon hope to repeat last year’s success with another win at Lime Rock this weekend.

“Lime Rock has been my home track since moving to America two years ago,” said Kimber-Smith.

“We had a great run there last year with a win, so I’m looking forward to getting back there this weekend, and it’s always great to have my family and friends at the track cheering us on.”

California native Robert Alon will turn his first laps at the east coast circuit this weekend. Although he’s never actually raced at the track, he has been practicing throughout the season on his racing simulator.

“I’ve never been to Lime Rock, but I’m really looking forward to turning some fast laps there,” stated Alon.

“I’ve done several hundred laps there on simulator, so I feel comfortable with the flow of the track, but it’s going to be a lot different this weekend with the amount of cars entered. We’re going to be in a lot of traffic just because of the length of the track, but after our last race in Canada where I was in traffic for the majority of my stints, I feel a lot more confident going into the weekend and am really looking forward to the race on Saturday.”

Lime Rock Park stands out as the shortest track on the IMSA Weathertech schedule, but it’s also unique in the fact that it only has one left hand turn which will enable the PR1 team to use a completely different set up at Lime Rock than most other tracks on the schedule.

“Lime Rock is a bit similar to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in that it’s all mainly right hand turns with only one left hander,” explained Kimber-Smith.

“So in terms of setting up the car, we won’t have to change a ton from the last race, but it’s definitely set up quite differently than most race tracks. The lap is very short at only 49 or 50 seconds per lap, so all of the PC cars are going to be within tenths of each other. Every second we have on the track is vital. I think it should be a really interesting race and hopefully at the end of the weekend, we’ll be at the front.

On track action begins Friday, July 22 and continues through Saturday. You can watch the race LIVE on FOX on Saturday, July 23 beginning at 3:00 PM EST.