The sausage curb at the bus stop chicane of Daytona’s road course struck quickly and hard, when the No. 17 Dallara P2 prototype of Agee Motorsports was brought out of balance and driver Jeroen Hannink suffered a hard impact into the outside retaining wall on lap three.

Described above was the scene of Agee Motorsports’ rough start to the 2022 VSCA SportsCar Championship season in the 24 Hours of Daytona back in January.

What followed was a lengthy repair stop that set the team back multiple laps. Only through a miraculous effort of the pit crew, the team was able to sustain the car and return for the remainder of the race and achieve damage control with a P13 finish.

Still, it was a far cry from the expectations and hopes the team carried into the season.

Fast forward to late March: In the 12 Hours of Sebring, the No. 17 Dallara P2 team falls back to last place on the opening lap, after getting loose in traffic. But once more the team consisting of Hannink and team-mates John Langan, Pier Armando Vender and Robert Cancian showed grit and determination and battled their way back into the race.

Lap 3 in the 24 Hours of Daytona: Jeroen Hannink hits the sausage curb at the bus stop chicane and suffers a hard crash into the wall after contact with another P2 prototype. The team battled back to finish the race in P13.

Not only that, but at the end of the 12-hour endurance classic, Agee Motorsports celebrated capping off a fantastic race performance with a P5 finish, to give them their first top-five of the year and moving them up to eighth place in the team championship standings.

“At Sebring, we made some changes going into the weekend, and that worked out great. We even lead a couple of laps and the overall pace of the car was good.”, Hannink comments on the turnaround the team completed at Sebring last month.

“Overall the feeling we got from our race at Sebring is a good one. Especially when I look at my own driving, I am happy with the result we got there.”, the Dutchman added.

Riding on the momentum of the top-five, the Virginia-based team owned by Mark Agee now faces the challenge of the first sprint race of the season at Laguna Seca this weekend.

On the question if and how the team’s approach will change this weekend, Hannink responded:

“This is our first Sprint Cup Race. Since we got a very good feeling about how things went at Sebring, we will adjust the approach as little as possible.”

On the unique challenge of changing from back-to-back endurance races of 24 hours and 12 hours to a 2-hour-40-minute sprint race, Hannink said:

“Of course, this type of racing is different from a longer endurance race. The strength of the team and myself does not lie in the shorter races but really in the longer endurance races.”

“In these kind of races tactics play a bigger role than often thought. In the years that I’ve proud to race for this team, I see that we have also become stronger as a team on these tactics as well. With that said, of course we will try to make this a great race, too.”

The No. 17 Dallara P2 team of Agee Motorsports, along with 54 other cars on the grid, will get to take the green flag in the Monterey Sports Car Challenge on Saturday 16:00 GMT.