Farhadi Leads Every Lap From the Pole For His First GT2 Win in His Sonoma Debut in the No. 127 TPC Racing With Dream Racing Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2
SONOMA, California (April 6, 2024) – The TPC Racing Team with Dream Racing opened the 2024 SRO GT America powered by AWS season Saturday at Sonoma Raceway with a breakout GT2-class victory with team driver Aaron Farhadi in the No. 127 Dream Racing/TPC Racing Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo. In his Sonoma Raceway debut, Farhadi led every lap from the pole in the 40-minute sprint while his teammate Alan Grossberg recovered from a mid-race bump-and-spin contact incident to finish third in the No. 102 Dream Racing/TPC Racing Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo.
Saturday’s victory gave TPC Racing a perfect two-for-two career win record in the GT America GT2 class even though the milestone achievements happened a full three years apart. In somewhat of a history-making start in 2021 at the Circuit of The Americas (COTA), a TPC Racing Lamborghini driven by Scott Schmidt secured an uncontested GT2 victory – and a top-10 overall finish – as the first GT2-spec car to compete in GT America.
This time, TPC’s GT2 race winner had to fend off the challenges of teammate Grossberg as well as returning series driver Brent Holden, who mounted a late and quick charge to catch Farhadi before time ran out.
Grossberg and Farhadi are back with TPC Racing following successful late-season runs with the team a year ago in partnership with Dream Racing that brings both of the race-winning and high-end motorsports entities together on track. Saturday’s win was the first for the TPC/Dream collaboration in just their third race together.
Farhadi set the GT2 pace from the drop of the green flag but his run to victory was aided by Grossberg’s spin when Holden couldn’t pull off an inside pass and collected the No. 102 Lamborghini. With Farhadi quickly leaving them behind, both Grossberg and Holden lost valuable time before continuing.
Grossberg was the first to move from the scene, pulling away still in second, but he soon realized his Lamborghini sustained backend damage from the hit. He held off Holden, who found some late-race pace, as long as he could but ultimately couldn’t prevent him from passing and settled for the third-place showing.
Sunday’s second and final GT America race is scheduled to start at 8:55 a.m. PDT tomorrow, Sunday April 7. The race can be seen live on the SRO YouTube channel at YouTube.com/GTWorld.
Harris Levitas, Director of Race Operations: “It was a really great race. Thank you for all of the hard work from the TPC Racing Team by Dream Racing. It’s really great to have this partnership with Dream Racing and see that we can succeed in winning in our first race of the year. Aaron drove an amazing race. He was smart at the start, built a gap, took advantage of that and ran to the end, which is fantastic. Tomorrow he starts P2, but we’ll see how he is on the race craft side of things after a strong run today and see if something interesting can happen for another win. Allen Grossberg did a great job and held second place for a while. Had a little contact, and that dropped him from second place to third, but no harm, no foul, and we’ll be out there tomorrow to fight again.”
Ado De Micheli, President, Dream Racing: “There was no doubt about how the partnership with TPC Racing would work out, so I am happy, of course, about the winning result. Today I am also especially happy and grateful to the organization and the track for the incredible effort they made to solve a situation that could have jeopardized the entire racing weekend. We’ve seen a lot of people working super hard to make this race weekend happen, so I think we need to be grateful to these organizations. And I am happy to see a series such as the GT2 category that has incredible potential. We hope it’s going to attract more people to the series. Obviously, Lamborghini proved to be a very competitive car, but there’s room for so many more cars and competitors. It’s the perfect entry level for racing people that want to have fun in a great environment, but also in a safe environment.”
Aaron Farhadi, Driver, No. 127 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo: “It’s great to have a win on the debut, but we really didn’t have the track time we wanted. Nobody did. It’s my first time here, my first time in Super Trofeo, so given the situation, it was a great result. The pace could have been way, way better toward the end. That’s something I struggle with as a driver and it’s something I need to work on. Besides that, it was a great day. It was a great pace at the beginning, we got out with a large lead and then at the end it fell off. If there’s something with the car, I know the guys will take care of it, but I think the majority of it was me. We had a bit of an issue with understeer, that was a little bit of it, but the majority I put on myself. I will take care of it for sure. The delays the last few days didn’t help. It’s definitely something I would say that lowered my expectations because it’s my first time here and, with the limited track time, I felt like ‘okay, whatever happens, happens’ and it happened to be good!”
Alan Grossberg, Driver, No. 102 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo: “We had a good battle going before the contact, had a couple of position changes, so it was unfortunate. It’s racing, so it happens, but we both managed to get restarted and go out and finish the race, which was great. My car was not in good shape to drive but I at least wanted to get to the line if I could finish it. I just drove the car the best I could drive it with what we had to learn the track a little bit more. We have all had so little practice time. I was still learning where to find my lines and solidify things for race two. We can come after it tomorrow with a little more knowledge about the track, and Brett and I will be fine. We’ll race hard again tomorrow. I can’t believe they managed to get the track back in shape. You’re talking about repaving the race track in essentially 24 to 48 hours. Getting us back on track was an amazing accomplishment by the race circuit team.”
About TPC Racing: TPC Racing is the Mid-Atlantic’s premier maintenance, service, tuning and modification center dedicated solely to Porsche sportscars. TPC Racing specializes in R&D and sales of high-performance modifications for Porsche sports cars and race cars, offering a wide range of vehicle upgrades. Best known for a line of forced induction solutions for the Porsche 911, Cayman and Boxster, a long-time focus on only one make, Porsche, has enabled TPC Racing to become experts in Porsche service, tuning, and racing. In 2000, TPC Racing began entering races under its own banner, scoring an SGS-class Championship in 2004 in the Grand-American Rolex Series and was a class winner in the 2006 Rolex 24 At Daytona, and captured the 2013 and 2016 IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA Gold Cup Championships. More information can be found at www.TPCRacing.com.
