MOMO NGT Motorsport No. 30 back on track at Daytona

The nighttime and early morning hours at the Rolex 24 at Daytona race proved to be eventful for the No. 30 MOMO NGT Motorsport Porsche GT3 car of Henrique Cisneros, Sean Edwards, Patrick Pilet and Kuba Giermaziak. Shortly after the 12-hour mark, the team pitted for its scheduled brake change and lost its second-place GT class position, falling to eighth place.

As has been the case all race, the MOMO drivers climbed the charts back into the top three. A lengthy caution period when morning fog rolled in, relegated Edwards to nearly one hour of driving under caution before turning the Porsche GT3 over to Pilet, who had to manage another nearly thirty minutes of following the pace car. The fog lifted and Patrick brought the familiar No. 30 MOMO NGT Motorsports Porsche back into the lead at the 18-hour mark, and eleventh overall, as attrition took its toll on many teams.

At 10:15 a.m., Kuba Giermaziak suffered a 180+ mile per hour left front suspension failure on the Daytona banking. He was able to control the car and navigate it safely back to the MOMO garage for repairs. The MOMO NGT Motorsport crew did a stellar job on repairs to the entire suspension system, radiator replacement and numerous other parts, returning the Porsche to the track in exactly one hour.

Sean Edwards, driver No. 30 MOMO NGT Motorsports Porsche GT3: “I had a really good stint. We were one lap down and we managed to get that back after the first caution after I got in. I was in P7 and just worked my way through the field to P1. I had a good flight with Andy Lally for the lead and got through. Our car is still really strong and in one piece so it’s looking good at the moment. The fog came in and that was a long, boring hour. Then Patrick go tin and had about another hour. We did our brake pad change and should go to the finish now. The car is strong and we hope we can be there for the sprint to the finish.”

Patrick Pilet, driver No. 30 MOMO NGT Motorsports Porsche GT3: “The caution for fog was long because we cannot run. It’s more difficult than driving normally for us, driving flat out, because it’s so boring. You need to keep the tires warm and everything, so you need to be careful to stay awake because you can make a mistake under a safety car situation like that. It’s so easy. After two good stints, the car was still very good, very consistent and the same car it has been since the start of the race. That’s great. Sometimes it’s not easy because there is a lot of dirt on the track, and a lot of traffic. We are on a good pace and we need to continue like this. The car is really good and we have the best lap times.”

Ramos Wahab, MOMO NGT Motorsport Team Owner: “Unfortunately, on the front straight Kuba had what appears to be 180+ miles per hour front left suspension failure. We still have to check the data but it looks like it sheared off for whatever reason. We thought he hit something but there’s no evidence because there’s not even a scratch on the body. The team is very enthusiastic to get the car ready and back on track. To be honest, we proved that you can run with these guys. We really had a big shot to win this race but luck was not on our side. We’ll repair the car and return to racing but a victory is not ours today.”

Kuba Gierzmaziak, driver No. 30 MOMO NGT Motorsports Porsche GT3: “It’s hard to say exactly what happened. We just had a suspension failure. The car didn’t have a scratch before. We were all doing a good job. The team prepared the car amazingly well. This just happened without any reason. It’s motor sport. It’s a 24-hour race so we will try to fix it and see where we are.

“It’s not easy for any of us. In this kind of race you just try to survive the many hours. Our plan was to continue to drive easy until about the last four hours. We were on the lead and not really pushing and it just happened. It’s hard to describe how we feel but let’s see how we end up.”

MOMO/NGT Motorsport