Team Seattle-The Heart of Racing finished sixth in GTD at the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship Brickyard Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway today.
Ian James (Phoenix, Ariz) started fifth in the No. 23 Team Seattle-Heart of Racing Porsche 911 GT America and drove a great first stint. He worked his way up to second in GTD by the time the team made its first pit stop under yellow on lap 27. At that point, the team made a driver change, put on four new tires and fuel.
After an extended caution period, and after all of the pit stops cycled through, Mario Farnbacher (Ansbach, Germany) started his stint in second place. From there, Farnbacher had to push the Alex Job Racing-prepared Porsche to its limit to try to hold off the hard-charging Ferrari, Audi and Viper. Unfortunately, Farnbacher did not have enough tires at the end of the race to contend for a podium position and finished sixth.
“The car was a bit different [in the race] than it was in the warm-up,” Farnbacher said. “It had more understeer and I don’t know why. Our Porsche, over a long stint, had no chance compared to the GT3 cars. The tires were totally gone at the end. We had no chance. It’s the most frustrating [feeling]. It’s like you want to defend your position, but you can’t because the Porsche is using so much more tire compared to the other cars. The problem is we don’t have enough aero to save the tires. We are always driving hard on the tires to be fast. And, the other guys don’t have to drive as hard behind us and save their tires. They just wait for the chance to pass us. It’s just frustrating.”
“Not a bad day,” James said. “But, we have high expectations on the team. [We finished] sixth place again like in Mosport. We really did everything right today. Both drives were good. The pit stops were good. The strategy was good. The Alex Job cars were the top Porsches – fifth and sixth. With the balance of performance, and the relative strengths of the cars, I think that was as good as we were going to get.”
Alex Job, team owner, likes the way the team ran.
“Mario and Ian drove a hard race today,” Job said. “They ran up at the front of the ultra-competitive GT field. The car wasn’t handling ideal, so they had to adjust their driver style and it was hard on the tires. Not too bad of a finish, but we always want more.”