Co-Drivers Rob Ferriol, Andrew Davis and Pierre Kaffer and the No. 30 GridRival/Team Hardpoint R8 LMS GT3 Scored the Young Team’s Fifth Place in the Season Finale
SEBRING, Florida (November 15, 2020) – Team Hardpoint earned a season-best finish in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Daytona (GTD) class at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on Saturday at Sebring International Raceway. Co-drivers Rob Ferriol, Andrew Davis and Pierre Kaffer finished fifth in the No. 30 GridRival/Team Hardpoint Audi R8 LMS GT3 during the 68th running of the event.
After an intense 12 hours of racing, the team covered 1,193 miles in 319 laps around the 3.74-mile circuit and finished just 10.085 seconds behind the class winner. The first-year team also reached other milestones during the event, with Davis earning a front-row start, Ferriol leading his first career lap after a turn one pass for the lead during the race’s second hour, and Davis led for eight additional laps during the ninth hour of the race following a full-course caution.
“What’s really cool for me is we had our best finish in 2020 in the longest race we ran,” Ferriol said. “I think it’s a great starting point for 2021, looking back here. I led laps, Andrew led laps, those are all good news stories for us. I couldn’t be prouder of Andrew and Pierre in the car, Will Bamber and Toni Calderon calling strategy and Owen Hayes as our engineer, and our entire team. We did 11 pit stops, and all of them were perfect. I can’t say enough about this team.”
Endurance racing comes with challenges to overcome, and that is especially true on the bumpy and treacherous Sebring surface. With three-hours, 30-minutes remaining and under full course caution, the team elected to stay on track rather than pit and move Davis to the lead. That strategy evaporated with 65 minutes remaining in the race when Davis pulled to pit lane with a punctured tire. Unfortunately, that stop was just minutes outside the fuel window to get to the finish.
“What a day, first off,” Davis said. “This race is one of the most grueling in the world. There are longer races, but this one just beats you up. Physically, for sure, because of the nature of Sebring International Raceway, but mentally it’s very, very difficult. Especially when darkness arrives. Being later in the year, there was a couple more hours of darkness which added some complexity to it. To come out in a top five finish, I actually was really pleased with the team. The effort put forth all week just to get the car better and give us something to fight with says something about this team, who is still in its infancy as a unit. I think the sky’s the limit for Hardpoint and I’m just excited I had an opportunity to run with them during the last couple of races of the year.”
Kaffer climbed behind the wheel for the run to the checkered flag, sitting eighth in class and still on the lead lap. In fuel conservation mode, Kaffer was unable to push the Audi to the limit. A final full-course caution with less than 30-minutes to go gave Kaffer enough fuel to get to the finish, but without enough time to make up any additional positions.
“Thank you to the whole team, they’ve done an awesome job the whole weekend,” Kaffer, an Audi Sport customer racing driver making his first start with Team Hardpoint, said. “I felt really confident from the first moment I joined Hardpoint and tried to help with my knowledge of the car. I think we had a great car today in our hands. In the end, it didn’t pay off for the podium because the tire puncture was two laps too early. I had to save fuel in my last stint. Without that, I think we could have finished P4 or P3. The full course yellow helped us. At the end, I was able to put some pressure on the (fourth place) Ferrari. Always when I was there, there was some traffic, and then the gap extended again. In the end, overall, all of us with Rob and Andrew did a great job.”
The fifth-place finish capped the inaugural season for Team Hardpoint, who joined the IMSA WeatherTech Championship in July with a plan to run only the sprint races. The team added Petit LeMans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring late in the season.
“I have to say thank you to Audi for all of the support we received this year,” Ferriol said. “We couldn’t have done this without them. It makes me super proud to be able to end the year on a high note with an Audi R8 LMS GT3 having led laps at the Sebring 12 hour and finishing in the top five.”
Team Hardpoint now turns its attention to the 2021 season and the recently announced Team Hardpoint EBM Porsche 911 GT3 R in the GTD class. The season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona is just weeks away, January 28-31 at Daytona International Speedway.
About Hardpoint Motorsports:
Hardpoint Motorsports was founded by Rob Ferriol in 2018 with the vision of combining his experience as a successful entrepreneur with his passion for racing. The Hardpoint brand brings together three distinct entities into one motorsport ecosystem. Team Hardpoint is the brand’s racing arm, providing its partners and customers opportunities to compete, brand, and promote in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Daytona class and the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge. Hardpoint Outfitters helps other teams and drivers extract more value from their motorsport investment by bundling branding, activation, and digital marketing services into customized turnkey packages, including design, apparel, hospitality, and social media management. The Hardpoint Paddock Foundation is the newest element of the ecosystem, created as a charitable foundation to support out of work paddock workers through the COVID-19 shutdown. As the shutdown comes to an end, the 501(c)3 Foundation is expected to grow into a more sustained model of providing vocational and educational support services to the professional sports car paddock community. More information on all of the Hardpoint Motorsports enterprises can be found at www.hardpoint.com or through its strong social media presence on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
