MONTEREY, Calif. – Tafel Racing team drivers had a tough go of it in today’s Round Five of the Grand-Am Rolex Series presented by Crown Royal Special Reserve, as part of the U.S. Sports Car Invitational delivered by Luggage Express at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Starting on the outside of row one, Eric Lux took an early race lead in his No. 74 Tafel Racing Rembrandt Charms Porsche GT3 Cup car. But, the team’s early success would soon turn to frustration, as the No. 43 Corvette made contact with Lux on lap 11. As a result of the contact, Lux had to bring the No. 74 machine to pit lane to tend to a leak coming from the bottom of the car. The Tafel Racing crew immediately went to work to fix the problem. After several minutes on pit lane, the team decided to take car to the garage for repairs. The car would return to the track on lap 25 and make three trips around the 2.2-mile circuit before permanently retiring the car. Lux’s co-driver Ian James would never get his chance in the machine as the car finished 22nd.

“We had a great start to the race,” Lux said. “Tafel Racing gave us a great car and we ended up going to the front on the first lap. We got an early yellow and took advantage of that. We came in put on some new tires and fuel. We went back out and worked our way through traffic. Unfortunately, it was pretty aggressive going through some traffic. I really don’t know what is going on in some people’s heads. We were going through the last corner [Turn 11] and one of the Corvettes just absolutely punted me in the left rear tire. I don’t know if that had anything to do with what happened to our car. However, we did have a gearbox problem and we had to retire from the race.”

Tooele, Utah -- Tafel Racing will start from the third and fifth rows in GT2 for tomorrow’s running of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) Larry H. Miller Dealerships Utah Grand Prix at Miller Motorsports Park (MMP).

Wolf Henzler piloted the No. 71 Tafel Porsche 997 RSR to a qualifying time of 2:45:635 and secured the fifth place starting position for Saturday’s grueling two-hour-forty-five-minute race.

“I didn’t feel very comfortable in qualifying and as a result we didn’t do very well,” said Henzler.  “I asked for a change in the set-up of the car following the practice that was just prior to qualifying.  Unfortunately, the change was not good and it gave us a snap-oversteer that was hard to handle.  I’m pretty disappointed for qualifying but happy we learned this before the actual race.”