Daytona, Fla. (27 January 2017) – Kicking off the 2017 IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season at Daytona International Speedway on Friday, TeamTGM had high hopes for a strong finish, but circumstances beyond the team’s control took the No. 4 Porsche out of the race early.
With a race strategy that saw Team Owner and driver Ted Giovanis open the race before turning the controls over to co-drivers Hugh Plumb and Guy Cosmo, everything was running according to plan.
Giovanis ran a clean and consistent first stint, maintaining a good pace that had him maintaining position as the race ran flat-out for the first 40 minutes.
Unfortunately, a car just ahead of the TeamTGM Porsche spun on the exit of the high-speed Bus Stop section and rolled up the track. With nowhere to go, the two cars made contact and the No. 4 Porsche sustained race-ending damage.
“The team was telling me to get in a rhythm and I did and I was just clicking off the laps one by one,” said Giovanis. “It was good because I was running lap times closer to my qualifying time. So I really wasn’t trying to race the car ahead at all, I was just maintaining my position in order to hand the car off to Hugh (Plumb) a few laps later. The car ahead of me had a big off and I thought he was going to go high so I went low, and when I went down low he came back around and hit the back end of my car.”
Though the race didn’t yield the positive result that the team had been hoping for, the progress made throughout the weekend has the entire TeamTGM organization eager to return to racing at Sebring International Raceway for Round 2 of the championship.
“We are already turning the page to Sebring,” added Giovanis. “We have a great group of people here at TeamTGM who will return to the shop and get the cars primed for Sebring in a couple of months.”
The IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season returns to race action at Sebring International Raceway on March 15-18.
FOX Sports 1 will televise the Daytona event on February 12 at 1:30 PM ET.