Tuesday, 29th April 2008

Farnbacher squad inherits Monza success.

Double Porsche Supercup champion Richard Westbrook has secured his first win in endurance competition after the Farnbacher Racing team took GT2 honours during the latest round of the Le Mans Series at Monza.

Running alongside Lars-Erik Neilsen and Allan Simonsen in the #91 Porsche 997 GT3 RSR, Westbrook finished second on the road before taking victory when the race-winning Porsche of the IMSA Performance MATMUT team was excluded for a technical infringement.

It capped a surprising end to the weekend for the Farnbacher crew, which had struggled for pace during the opening part of the event after team boss and race engineer Horst Farnbacher went down with food poisoning and was unable to take up his role with the team.

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"Horst went down with a severe case of food poisoning and he couldn't engineer the car all weekend," said Westbrook. "It was Allan's turn to qualify the car this time and it just wasn't quick enough – it's as simple as that.

"So Allan, Lars and I sat down and said, 'Look, let's just have a trouble-free race, take no risks and pick up some points, because we're certainly not going to win it'. As it happened, we hit loads of trouble and ended up winning it!"

Westbrook started the car, and rose up the order to second. Back in for a final double-stint, he then sought to conserve second place and maybe even challenge for the win.

"I was surprised how quick we were," he said. "But then we picked up some debris while the safety car was out and I got a puncture. It was a harsh blow-up and ripped some of the bodywork away.

"After I'd pitted, we got a black-and-orange flag from the officials, ordering me to the pits to repair the bumper. I was thinking, 'We're going to be so far down now', so to be told we'd won was a bit of a shock. But we were due a bit of luck after going out in the first race at Barcelona with accident damage, so I'll take that. We worked hard, really grafted, and turned it around."

The win puts Westbrook, Simonsen and Nielsen joint third in the championship, just three points off the GT2 lead.

"It's blown the championship wide open," he said. "We were all a bit down after Barcelona, but it's like the championship's been reset and we're all starting again in the next round at Spa in two weeks' time."

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