For any driver involved in International motor sports, sitting on on the pitwall twiddling your thumbs must be desperately frustrating, but that’s what Tommy’s had to do for much of the run-up to this weekend’s Daytona 24 Hours in America.

He and regular racing partner Mike Newton are co-driving the Synergy Racing Daytona Prototype with Burt and Brian Frisselle; a pair of up-and-coming youngsters with tremendous talent and great prospects. “It’s an American team running two American drivers,” said a philosophical Erdos. “It’s only to be expected that they’ll bias the time towards them, especially as they’ll be racing for the team all season.” He’ll have to rely heavily on his experience, but what the Brazilian may be lacking in tracktime during practice and qualifying he hopes to make up for during the race. “I made a point of letting Mike [Newton] have as much of the time allocated to the two us as I could, but the team itself is very, very good. They have a top class engineer in Gary Grossenbacher and Price Cobb, the team manager, has a wealth of experience. We may not have the fastest chassis/engine combination, but I’m confident we will score highly on reliability.”