GB Autosport Sebring Post-Race Report

Sebring, Fla. (21 March 2015) – Hot on the heels of an outstanding display of teamwork and skill in qualifying for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, GB Autosport had high hopes for the huge endurance event on Saturday. But despite the big effort and months of preparation, the race ended early for the No. 81 Tully’s Porsche GT America.

After a motor problem struck the squad on Thursday, the team had to sit out the ensuing practice sessions, and only managed to get a hold of a new motor just over an hour ahead of the all-important qualifying session after a team member rushed the unit to the track from Orlando. The GB Autosport crew delivered an outstanding performance in the high Florida heat, installing the motor in the untested car with just minutes to spare before dispatching Damien Faulkner to the qualifying grid.  Despite missing out on over half of the practice sessions for the event weekend with the issue, the plucky Irishman repaid the crew's effort with a big one of his own as he scored sixth on the grid in GTD competition, matching the team's best-ever qualifying result.Following a successful race morning warm up and an escalation of excitement in pre-race activities, Damien Faulkner took the green flag for Round 2 of the IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Championship and matched the blistering pace set by the GTD field for the first half hour of race. As the track began to take its toll and times in the entire GTD field dropped, Faulkner made the most of his Continental Tires to maintain a steady pace to hand the car over to Michael Avenatti for his first stint in sixth position. A long caution period during Avenatti’s stint allowed him to protect his tires and that combined with perfectly executed stops by the crew kept the Coffee Rocket in fighting position into the second and third hour. Upon returning to green flag racing, Avenatti continued to keep up the pace and clocked lap after lap in the sweltering midday heat.Just before the three hour mark, Faulkner returned to the controls of the “Coffee Rocket” around the 3.74-mile road course as track temperatures reached excesses of 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Being careful to maintain his Continental Tires, Faulkner managed to lay down impressive lap times and march his way up the field to run as high as sixth before pitting to hand the Tully’s Coffee-sponsored Porsche back over to Avenatti to complete his drive time.Alas, the team’s podium dreams were cut short just past the four hour mark. Just after hopping back into the “Coffee Rocket” an oil sensor alarm sent Avenatti back to pit lane and ultimately forced the team to retire from the race when the motor stopped producing power, keeping Kuba Giermaziak and Mike Skeen from getting the chance to make any race laps when the effort ended early.“It is just really, incredibly disappointing,” said Team Manager Cole Scrogham. “I have been doing this for a long time and I have never before had a double engine failure in the same event weekend before. I am so disappointed for this whole team. The guys did something absolutely incredible yesterday, replacing the engine for qualifying in such a short window of time and then Damien (Faulkner) gave us a great qualifying result so it is disheartening to end the race like this. But on the other hand it is better that it happened earlier in the day, things like this are much harder to swallow closer to the end of the race. Now we have time to clean up, re-group and make our next move.”“I’m just completely gutted for the whole team,” added Faulkner. “Everyone did such a fantastic job this week, from the guys that screw the nuts and bolts all the way up to Mario (Prezel, engineer) and Cole (Scrogham, team manager). I have to give a special thanks to Mario because he did such a great job this week. As an engineer, they like to have data to go off of and because of our issues this week he had very little data to work with, but he still gave us an incredible car to race with. My first stint was a bit of a challenge, but my second stint was great and I have to thank Mario for working so hard on the car for that. I also have to thank Michael (Avenatti) for believing in this team and working so hard to make things happen, this is not the way we wanted to end this race. But we will keep our heads up and head on to the next.”