Farnbacher Looking to “Bounce Back” in Final Two Races

Mario Farnbacher said he and Forte Racing are aiming to “bounce back” after a difficult string of races despite GTD class victory-contending pace as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship heads into its final two rounds of the season.

After a pair of frustrating races at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Virginia International Raceway, where the No. 78 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 was taken out of class-winning positions, the team achieved a season-best second-place result at Road America.

In Canada, the Shane Seneviratne-led team was in contention for the win before an incident with an LMP2 car resulted in a crash, while the team was handed a blocking penalty on the final lap in Virginia after leading most of the second phase of the race.

“There’s things you can’t control sometimes,” Farnbacher told Sportscar365. “We put our heads down all the time, and we know how strong we are if we go clean through a race, and our time will come. It’s just a matter of time.

“Mosport was sad. We could have won, [or come] P2. Who knows? Then came Road America, and we didn’t have anything for the Ferrari at the end, but it was cool racing anyway in my opinion.

“VIR, which is still a very difficult subject to talk about because I still don’t agree with it. It was a tough fight for sure.

“In my stint, the second stint of the race, I had a long fight with Philip [Ellis] in the Mercedes and then ultimately we lost the pit stop to them and then the yellow came out, and then [I had] the one-hour battle with the Ferrari, so it was not an easy race.

“Now, it’s basically just to look up and bounce back in the last two races.”

Despite the pair of would-be wins, the German driver feels confident in the team’s ability to perform.

Forte also heads into this weekend’s Michelin Endurance Cup round at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with a new driver in Eric Filgueiras, filling the team’s third seat alongside full-season drivers Farnbacher and Misha Goikhberg.

“We know we have a strong package,” said Farnbacher. “We need some luck, too, of course. Now we have Eric as a good third. I’m really looking forward to that.

“We know Misha is good and the crew is doing amazing pit stops, so everything is fine and everything is going to be clean.”

Farnbacher felt especially confident about the team’s chances this weekend’s Battle On The Bricks, given the car’s fourth-place class finish in the race last year, and the team’s 2023 Motul Petit Le Mans GTD victory.

While Farnbacher wasn’t a part of either of those lineups, he triumphed in the 2022 season-ending round at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

“Now we just need to merge,” said Farnbacher. “It’s always the goal to finish on the top step. We can ultimately control what we can control and try to perform the best we can as a team and that’s the only thing that we can do.

“We are confident for sure. We know the car is traditionally very good here [at IMS]. But there are so many factors. We don’t know about the weather that’s coming up [on Sunday].

“Last year, there were a lot of mixed conditions, and even then, the car was quite good from what I saw.

“I think we have a strong chance to finish on the podium, but I think it’s too early to talk about where exactly we’ll end up. There’s a lot of strong competitors here. The field is narrow. I’m really looking forward to the challenge.

“We want to show that we can win a race because we’ve had strong finishes throughout the season. Even when we haven’t been there pace-wise, we finished strong.

“I want to finish the season on a high, even if we don’t have anything to talk about for the championship anymore. But it’s definitely something that is our goal to finish on the top step at the end of the races.”