Chris Festa with Samax Motorsport Finish 6th
in Rolex 24 Hours
January 28th, 2007, Daytona, FL. Chris
Festa driving with Samax Motorsport, finished 6th
out of 73 starting cars in his debut performance in
the world renowned Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. Chris
and his teammates, Tomas Enge (former Formula One and
IndyCar driver), Roger Yasukawa (IndyCar) and 2 other
drivers, won the SunTrust/Speed TV Most Improved
Position Award by starting 28th in the
Daytona Prototype class and reaching 5th
place when Chris exited the car with 2 hours
remaining. With only 50 minutes left in the 24 hour
classic, the team had to stop to replace a gearbox
loosing 2 positions to 7th. Tomas Enge
jumped in the car with 35 minutes remaining, ran down
and passed the 6th place car to recapture
one of the two lost positions with only 3 minutes left
in the race.
Chris and Tomas Enge anchored the team by driving 15
hours between them. Chris took over driving duties
from lead off driver Tomas and ran from 3:30 PM to
5:30 PM on Saturday afternoon. The duo took the car
from 28th to the top 12. The other team
drivers took the car up to 8th by
midnight. Chris then drove a remarkable stint,
getting in the car during a hard rain at 12:15 AM and
exiting at 4:20 AM in 6th place still
raining. Except for the hour long race stoppage for
track repairs, Chris drove for 3 hours and 15 minutes
in the rain at night, picking up 2 positions and
turning several fastest laps. By 9:20 AM, Chris was
back in the car running in 6th place and
finally got out of the car for the last time with two
hours remaining at 11:30 AM in 5th place.
"What a great race," said Chris after the checkered
flag, "it killed us to give up 5th with the
gearbox problem, but Tomas was fantastic getting us
back to 6th in the closing minutes. The
other drivers, Roger, Kris and Christian were great;
always moving the car forward with no driving mistakes
all race. The team gave us a near flawless car for 24
hours and 2300 racing miles. Without the near perfect
car, all the driving in the world wouldn't help. It
was a fantastic debut and I'd like to thank Peter
Barron and all of Samax for this opportunity. It was
cool to find out on the way home that we won the
SunTrust Most Improved Position Award on TV, just
icing on the cake for the guys. This team is so good
that our great race was secondary to our number 11
car. While we had an exciting race, our sister car
nearly won the race and finished second. This is just
a great team
For more information visit:
www.chrisfestaracing.com;
http://www.samaxmotorsport.com/.
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