The Heart of Racing driversMario Farnbacher (Germany) and Alex Riberas (Spain) drove the No. 23 The Heart of Racing Porsche to a fifth place finish in today’s running of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway (VIR).

Farnbacher had the wheel of the 23 at the start of the two-hour-and-forty-five minute race this afternoon. The team decided to give-up their sixth place starting position in GTD and go to the back of the field to take new Continental Tires. At the drop of the green the young German was making up positions and into the top five. When he turned the Porsche over to Riberas he was in eighth place. The Spaniard pitted with 35-minutes to go in the race for a last stop and allowed the rear wheels to spin while the car was in the air which garnered a drive-thru penalty. Other teams received penalties and had over heating issues which helped the Alex Job Racing team get a hard earned top five finish on the day.

“If you would have told me this morning that we would start from the back of the field and finish top five, I would have said no way,” Riberas said. “We are in survival mode out there on the track. We are down on speed on the straights, so that makes it tough. Fifth place feels like a victory today.”

“It is a good result for the team today,” Farnbacher said. “We had a lot go on in the race. We had the drive-thru for the spinning wheels and we started at the back of the field. We may have been able to get P4, but still a good result. Most of the championship contenders finished behind us, so that is a positive. We need some help with the balance of performance and we can have a good fight on the track for the last two races.”
 
“After the last three races that we have had I think we were due a little luck today,” Alex Job, team owner said. “We made the decision to start on new tires at the back so we were in the hole from the start. Mario and Alex did a good job, we had a little mistake on the pit stop with the spinning wheels, but in the end it really didn’t hurt us too bad. You can still see how we are down on straight line speed, but we were able to make the best of it today with a top five finish.”
 
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will travel to the Circuit of the Americas for the Lone Star Le Mans weekend, September 14-17.