Magnus Racing Continues Development with 12th at Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fl (January 27, 2014)- Campaigning an all-new car for the debut of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, Magnus Racing overcame a series of minor obstacles to finish 12th at the conclusion of yesterday’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

 “It’s certainly not the type of finish we’re used to at Daytona, but the goal for us was to learn what we could about the car’s longevity,” stated Magnus Racing team owner John Potter. “Everyone on the team worked really, really hard to get us here, and the fact that we were able to finish is a testament to the quality of the team. I really want to thank Flex-Box and all of their guests for joining us this weekend, it’s a shame we weren’t able to deliver our normal Daytona performance, but we hope we can continue a long relationship with them.”

With overall pace and balance-of-performance being a consistent challenge for all of the Porsche entrants in the GTD class, the 2012 Rolex 24 class winners knew that top results would be difficult, but hopes were still high for a strong finish. Similarly, with long-time sponsor Flex-Box returning, and with several guests on hand to experience the event, the pressure was as high as ever to deliver for the valued partner.

Starting from the seventh row, the No. 44 Flex-Box Porsche 911 GT America took the green flag with driver Andy Lally, however, an early setback would come within minutes of the race start.

Experiencing a minor cooling issue, an early yellow would give Lally an opportunity to pit for the team to sort out the issue, also allowing John Potter to take the reigns for his first stint of the race. Running consistent laps and slowly making his way up the order, a solid afternoon of stints would proceed with drivers Potter, Lally, as well as Wolf Henzler and J.F. Dumoulin running incident free as the sun began to set over the twice-around-the-clock race.

Unfortunately, when the time came for Potter to get in for his second stint, a rare issue with the gear-shifting system would emerge as he left the pit forcing the Utah resident to immediately return to the pit as the team looked to diagnose the issue. Just 90 seconds after pitting, the car was back underway, the crew doing their traditional amazing job to replace the air compressors used in the pneumatic gear-shift system.

With the team now having lost a couple of laps, all focus was on playing the pit strategy to gain laps back, with the team slowly moving their way up the order as the night drew on. With every driver running mistake free, and the crew continuing with faultless pit stops, they began to crack the top ten as attrition started to play out.

Unfortunately, that would all change as driver Andy Lally reported a strange vibration at high speed, eventually leading to an evaluatory pit stop. The team determined that the front splitter was coming apart requiring a full replacement of the front nose. Due to the time involved in replacing and mounting, the team would re-emerge several laps down with any hopes for victory effectively gone.

Now focusing on turning in laps and learning more about the longevity of the all-new 911 GT America, the only recurring issue would be the car’s front splitter which would experience additional failures during the second half of the race.

As the race cycled through, no one put a foot wrong behind the wheel or during pit stops, with the only real issue becoming the need to run the final hours of the race without a front splitter entirely.

The car would take the checkered flag in 12th place, the team knowing much more about the vehicle’s relative strengths and weaknesses.

For Andy Lally, a fairly uneventful race failed to highlight the quality of the team’s effort.

“The guys did a great job to get here,” stated Lally. “It’s unfortunate we were never really in this thing, but if we couldn’t have a shot at the win, we at least wanted to know everything we could about how the car performs in an endurance race. We definitely have a sense for that now, and it will help us for the rest of the season. Everyone should be proud of the effort, we’ll be back even stronger for Sebring.”

Wolf Henzler, who will return to his program with Falken Tire beginning at Sebring, enjoyed his first race with the team.

“Even though it was my first race with Magnus, I’ve known a lot of the people here for a long time,” stated Henzler. “The quality of the team is great, it’s just unfortunate we had the difficulties we did. I wish everyone at Magnus much success, I’m sure they’ll rebound this season.”

J.F. Dumoulin, also making his debut, is glad he got the call to join the team.

“It came together very late, but I’m glad to have been a part of the program,” stated Dumoulin. “This is a great team made up of quality people and I’m sure they’ll deliver some great results as the season continues. It’s a brand-new car and everyone is still learning, but they’ll be at the top of the charts soon.”

With Magnus’s marketing efforts becoming a bit of a notorious effort during the Rolex 24, the team failed to disappoint in 2014. Beyond the success of last week’s “Rediscover SportsCar” video, as well as the launch of this year’s race poster (“Back to the Tudor”), the team successfully ran a 24-hour, pit-side webcast boasting nearly 100,000 total views by the end of the weekend. The only failure came in hosts Ryan Eversley and Sean Heckman’s inability to get driver Shane van Gisbergen to make an appearance, which became a massive 12-hour social media campaign among the fans.

While the TUDOR United SportsCar championship won’t return to racing action until March 15 at the 12 Hours of Sebring, there will be little time off for the team. Between rebuilding the car after the wear of Daytona, and an upcoming test at Sebring International Raceway, the crew at Magnus will be hard at work over the coming weeks.