January 29, 2012

Rolex 24 at Daytona: Battle Axis 68 makes it to the end!



The TRG / Axis of Oversteer car driven by Chris Cummin, Kevin Estre, Damien Faulkner, Carlos Gomez and Ben Keating crossed the finish line at the 50th edition of the Rolex 24 at Daytona in twenty fourth position in class.

The team completed 640 laps and after starting on the last row and managing to make its way up to as far as 8th place had second gear fail in the middle of the night. Second gear is crucial at Daytona and from then on the race became an excersize in damage control. Unfortunately Sunday morning the gearbox on the Porsche GT3 let go and had to be swapped for a new one.

The TRG mechanics put in another stellar effort to get the guys back on track and in a position to cross the finish line even after the car was punted by one of the McDreamy/Dempsey Racing Mazdas with about an hour and a half to go.

_MON2473

The GT class was won by Magnus Racing in the 44 Porsche of Andy Lally, Richard Lietz, John Potter and Rene Rast from the TRG / Sargent & Lundy GT3 of Steve Bertheau, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Marc Goosens, Wolf Henzler and Spencer Pumpelly.

Don't miss our giant high resolution photo gallery, after the jump...


8 comments:

  1. What an exciting race! It was really cool to get an inside view of a professional team competing at a prestigious race. I'll definitely be buying one of your stickers to put one my car to support what you guys are doing.

    P.S. Carlos had a very cool suit with the AxisOfOversteer logo on the front.

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  2. I came here hoping for a much better McDreamy comment then I got, but I suppose it will have to do.

    My armchair cheering squad was in full force for about 18 of those 24 hours (man's gotta sleep, especially if he's on a couch and not at Daytona). Wished CG could have stayed up there longer without the trans issues, the way things were going I could have fathomed a top 5!

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  3. Great effort guys! I was disappointed to (apparently) miss most of you guys in action, even though I watched as much as I could (nothing like waking up to the howl of an onboard feed from the mazda).

    Heh my FB feed had a mysterious ghost post something along the lines of 'heywoodjablowme' but I have no idea what that could possibly have been about (or where it came from, lol).

    Also they did a short piece on that nice blue M5 pace car. Couldn't help but visualize smoke billowing from those back fenders and airborne pieces of rubber. I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be real-world photos of my imagined scenario in your possession ;D Hope you had some fun this weekend. /jealous

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  4. So was the #68 the fastest pay-driver car? Or didthr other pay-driver TRG car make it past?

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  5. Congratulations to the whole team! A great performance given the mechanical issues they had to deal with.

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  6. All the TRG cars are pay driver cars. #65 were all pay drivers, #64, 4 out of !, #66 and 67 only 1, and 3 in our car. We were on par with the 66 and 67 throughout the middle of the race.

    All 5 cars finished, and we were last due to the major time spent in the garage. That says a lot about TRG. Raced with them last year in IMSA, but after Rolex24, my respect and admiration for Kevin Buckler and the TRG crew rose up to a new level. Just awesome!!

    A lot of the P-Cars, Ferraris, Mazdas, Chevys out there where Pro driver's only cars

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  7. Congrats all around boys...
    And great to see you on telly also



    F1Mikal

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