TEAM NEWS: Baas and Farnbacher Finish 11th In Farnbacher Loles Porsche Saturday At Rolex Series GT Race at Iowa

Photo by John Thawley NEWTON, Iowa, July 15 - The Farnbacher Loles Porsche No. 85 of Ian Baas and

Dominik Farnbacher started second, ran in second place for more than 40 laps

and contended for the lead of the Rolex GT race at Iowa Speedway Saturday.

Unfortunately it ended up 11th in the final rundown after losing many laps due to

a problem with its wheel studs.

Farnbacher qualified second only to Kelly Collins' Pontiac with a lap in

45.582 seconds (102.672 miles per hour) with the Shoes for Crews and

Recaro-sponsored No. 85. He started the 186-lap race, but had an incident with Leighton

Reese in Turn 9 on the first lap. Luckily the officials understood it was just a

racing incident and Farnbacher wasn't penalized, and on lap four he was back

in fourth place.

Farnbacher passed Bryce Miller in another one of the Farnbacher Loles

Porsches for third place on lap nine. He was back where he started, second, by lap

12 when he zoomed by Nathan Swartzbaugh in Turn 7.

Farnbacher then set his sights on Collins, and by lap 25 he was nipping at

Collins' back bumper. He almost passed Collins on lap 27, but Collins fought

him off and eventually stretched his lead over Farnbacher again.

Farnbacher was still in second place when he made a pit stop on lap 53 for

Baas, of Noblesville, Ind., to take over. Baas immediately knew something was

amiss because the car had a bad vibration in its right front. It turned out to

be a problem with the car's wheel studs, and Baas was forced to bring the

Porsche behind the wall for repairs. The problem cost the entry 15 laps and

knocked it out of contention for a podium finish. Still, some of the laps Baas

turned during his stint were among the top-three laps at the time, and he advanced

to 11th at the end for the team and his sponsors, APR, goapr.com,

silvertrek.com and Team Janica Racing.

The race was broadcast Saturday on SPEED.

Baas will do double-duty this coming weekend, using a friend's private jet to

shuttle between the Rolex Series GT race at Barber Motorsports Park near

Birmingham, Ala., on Saturday (live on SPEED at 4 p.m. Eastern) and the SPEED

World Challenge Touring Car race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington,

Ohio on Sunday (tape-delayed on SPEED at 3 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, July 28).

Fans can keep up to date on Baas's schedule throughout the year through his

Web site at ianbaasracing.com. Farnbacher Loles' Web site is at

farnbacherloles.com. Grand-Am's Web site is at grand-am.com.

The SPEED World Challenge Web site is at world-challenge.com. Baas drives for

STaSIS Motorsports in that series. Its Web site is at stasisengineering.com.

Baas' post-race quote follows:

"Dominik started the car. He had contact early with the No. 6, but he ran in

second place for a long time. Then he came in and gave the car to me, but

there was a big vibration in the right-front wheel on my out lap. We discovered

that four out of the five wheel studs had pulled out. We went back to the

garage to fix it, and then I went back out.

"Once I got going, I had a good car. I was running the third-fastest laps at

times, but I was too many laps down. We just didn't have any luck today.

"The track is nice. It's very tight and very physical, but it's fun. I

always wanted to race on an oval like this. I enjoyed it, and the fans were

awesome."