TAVARES, Fla. (September 1, 2016) - Cooper MacNeil (Hinsdale, Ill.) and Gunnar Jeannette (Salt Lake City, Utah) will drive WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R's in the final two rounds of the Pirelli World Challenge Series (PWC) to run at Sonoma Raceway, September 16-18 and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, October 7-9.
MacNeil will drive the No. 79 WeatherTech Racing Porsche in the PWC GTA Class. Jeannette will drive the No. 97 WeatherTech Racing Porsche in the GT category. In addition to running the three remaining 50-minute sprint races, two at Sonoma and one at Laguna Seca, the duo will share a seat for the PWC SprintX race at Laguna Seca as well.
"I'm excited to run PWC for the last two races at Sonoma and Laguna Seca," MacNeil said. "I have done a lot of races with SCCA, but never on the SCCA Pro Racing side. It will be a different format with the race being a sprint format instead of the endurance length I am used to doing. I have only been to Sonoma once before, back in 2011 running Ferrari Challenge, but I was on the podium both races. We are going to try hard to get back up there this time with a Porsche! 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 fair."
Jeannette is ready to go sprint racing.
"I'm excited to be doing the next PWC round at Sonoma," Jeannette said. "It's been a long time since I've done a proper single driver Pro race. I did the duel sprint race event that IMSA did back in 2014, but this is a different story. My only World Challenge start was in an Audi at Sebring in 2004, so it's been a little bit! 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."
Team owner, Alex Job, is in preparation.
"We have two cars that are race ready and we wanted to get in a couple of more races before the leaves turn colors," team owner, Alex Job said. "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. 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."
The Pirelli World Challenge Series Cadillac Grand Prix at Sonoma Raceway will run September 16-18.