WeatherTech Racing will make the switch to Pirelli World Challenge for the remainder of the season as a two-car operation, the team announced Thursday.
The move comes in the wake of the No. 22 Porsche 911 GT3 R of Cooper MacNeil having been withdrawn from IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition over cited Balance of Performance concerns.
MacNeil will drive the No. 79 Porsche in the PWC GTA class, with Gunnar Jeannette at the wheel of the No. 97 entry in GT, beginning with the round at Sonoma Raceway on Sept. 16-18.
The two cars will complete the season at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Oct. 7-9, including the SprintX round, which MacNeil and Jeannette will share driving duties of a single Porsche.
“I’m excited to run PWC for the last two races at Sonoma and Laguna Seca,” MacNeil said. “It will be a different format with the race being a sprint format instead of the endurance length I am used to doing.
“The GTA class has been close all year. Some of my main competition will be an old teammate Mike Schein. We used to race Porsche Cup back in 2011 and we had some close races together.
“It should be fun to get back out there with him and see how we fare.”
Jeannette added: “The sprint format will obviously be quite different than sharing the car with Cooper. It will be good to still work together to get both of our cars set-up as best as possible for the races.
“We’ll be playing catch up to all the other teams that have been running all year, so having two cars will be very helpful.
“The Porsches have shown to be competitive throughout the year and Sonoma should be a decent track for us.”
The end-of-year program will mark Alex Job Racing’s foray into PWC competition.
“Cooper was considering running the Laguna Seca event for a while and it just made sense for us to add the Sonoma race and get Gunnar involved as well,” team owner Alex Job said.
“The SprintX event at Laguna Seca will be something a little different, but a format we are used to doing with a pit stop and two drivers.
“We will get the cars out on Pirelli tires before we make the trip across the country next week.”