Team Seattle-The Heart of Racing drivers Mario Farnbacher and Ian James will be joined once again by Alex Riberas for the season finale TUDOR United SportsCar Championship Petit Le Mans to run Saturday, Oct. 4 at Road Atlanta.
Farnbacher (Ansbach, Germany), James (Phoenix, Ariz.) and Riberas (Barcelona, Spain) raced together in the No. 23 Team Seattle-Heart of Racing Porsche at Daytona and Sebring early in the year. The trio are looking to finish the TUDOR Championship season very strong at this weekend’s 10-hour or 1000 kilometer, whichever comes first, Petit Le Mans at the 2.4-mile 11-turn Road Atlanta.
“This is the last race, one of the big three, no reason why we should not be strong,” James said. “We have a great driver line-up, great team, now we just need the racing Gods to be on our side. The first eight hours we definitely have to stay out of trouble. Unfortunately the GTD Class gets beaten up on, but that is part of the deal. We took the opportunity to test at Road Atlanta last weekend and we have a good baseline as the weekend is shorter than it has been in the past.”
Farnbacher is a 2012 Petit Le Mans GTC Class winner.
“We are coming into the race looking to close the season out strong,” Farnbacher said. “We have one speed flat out! I ran in the Petit Le Mans race in 2012 and won the GTC Class. I like the track and there is a full field for this weekend so we will have a lot of traffic to deal with and watch out for over the 10 hours. Alex Job has given us good cars and the guys tested over last weekend so we are going into the weekend with a lot of confidence.”
Riberas has spent 2014 racing in Europe running the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and Porsche Carrera Cup.
“Our season has been pretty good in Europe,” Riberas said. “We’ve been struggling a bit with the set-up of the car, but we were really close to wins at several races. At the moment we had to settle for a best finish of second place, but we still have two races to go to get that race win. This will be my first time at Road Atlanta. The track looks really like good fun to drive. My teammates gave me lots of tips and told me all the little secrets you need to know. I think that’s the best preparation you can have. I love the endurance racing! It’s clearly my favorite! The longer the race, the better! The test we had last Friday really helped me to get up to speed.”
Alex Job, team owner, had the team in a positon to win.
“We are welcoming Alex back and looking forward to having a successful weekend,” Job said. “We took the opportunity to test this past Friday. We have some new parts on the car that arrived just in time for the Circuit of The America’s race and we didn’t have to time to prove them out, so we did that this past Friday. We already have a good start to the Petit weekend.”