Daytona24: Alex Job Racing hour 6 report

Alex Job Racing Battles through first Six Hours of Rolex 24 At Daytona

Daytona Beach, Fla., (Jan. 30, 2010) - The No. 23 Foametix/Battery Tender/Alex Job Racing/Porsche 997 GT3 Cup entry was battling for the GT lead during the first six-hours of the 48th running of the Grand-Am Road Racing Series Rolex 24 Hour At Daytona.

Martin Ragginger started the car from the 21st position on the GT grid. The team had an incident in the first practice of the weekend that caused them to take the car to a body shop in Orlando for repairs Thursday afternoon. The all-nighter pulled by the crew was rewarded with the No. 23 Porsche leading the race twice in the first five-hours.

Ragginger was able to drive through the rain storm that covered the area during the first 90 minutes of the race. On his first pit stop he elected to switch to slicks. In both wet and dry conditions the young Austrian was the fastest GT car on the track.

"The first three laps in the rain I was being very careful," Ragginger said. "Other cars on the banking were really slow, but I wanted to be a little cautious after our tough start to the weekend. After that I was able to catch one car after the other. When I pitted for the first time we went to slicks. I think I was the first car to do that and it was a good call as I was able to stay at the front. At the end I was the quickest car out there. The team did a great job to prepare the car for the race."

Ragginger handed off to German Dominik Farnbacher on lap 66. Farnbacher returned to the race and was able to keep the Foametix/Battery Tender Porsche in the lead until some contact cost the 2005 Rolex GT winner some time. On lap 111 Farnbacher radioed the crew reporting that second gear had became the second neutral. On lap 136 the team decided to bring the car back to the garage to fix the transmission and perform maintenance.

"The No. 14 spun right in front of me, and I could not go around him, I had to stop," Farnbacher said. "I went back around him and then went into the next corner and the green DP car thought he was the king of the road and hit me in the side and caused damage to our right front tire. That wasn't the big problem. The big problem was when second gear gave up. That was costing me a lot of time because you use second gear quite a bit around here to accelerate out of the slow corners. We rebuilt the gearbox right before the race. There were no hints that it was damaged. It made an explosion when I shifted to second and then it just went away."

The team installed Rolex 24 hour first-timer Mitch Pagerey and returned to the fray on lap 175. Once again the Alex Job Racing crew did an outstanding job on repairs replacing the transmission and performing brake service in less than 90 minutes.

-source: ajr