[h=2]IMSA: Job continues customer search[/h] Tuesday, 06 December 2016


Marshall Pruett (words and images)

Alex Job ended the 2016 IMSA season with two fully-funded GT Daytona entries in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and closed the year with a pair of glaring vacancies at his Florida shop. Despite ongoing efforts to fill the void left behind by WeatherTech Racing and Team Seattle, the Porsche specialist has yet to secure a replacement program to continue in IMSA.


As a sports car entrant dating back to the 1980s, Job serves as the most tenured member of IMSA's paddock. Maintaining his presence in the series is a top priority.
"I'm still trying to put something together for 2017," Job (pictured below during the 1989 Rolex 24 at Daytona) told RACER. "We've got a couple things in the works but nothing that is finalized yet. It is difficult having both programs end at the same time and have to rebuild completely. I have been blessed for a number of years to have two extremely successful customers and funding those programs was not an issue.

"But that has changed, and we are available and ready to talk to anybody about any kind of program. I'd prefer running a Porsche, but I have to look at all business opportunities and we have run a lot of different cars, including prototypes."
Outside of his GTD interests, Job has his eye on diversifying AJR with expansions into other racing series.
"I am looking at everything at the moment," he said. "The GS class in the Continental Tire Series would be attractive to me. It is obviously a much more affordable category. If I were to stay with Porsche, the new Cayman GT4 would be a viable option for that class. And there you have a much more affordable capital assets platform and a more affordable budget.


"I'm also going back to my basics and looking at some IMSA Porsche GT3 Challenge Cup programs. Currently, World Challenge is definitely appealing to me because it is a sprint format and definitely the budgets are hugely less than GTD. Hopefully, the [PWC] series stays to their niche with sprint racing. I would be happy to pick up a customer to go run that championship as well." As one of a few independent entrants left in IMSA's GT Daytona class, Job's team provides an interesting benchmark for the health of the Pro-Am GT category. With the recent influx of factory-supported GTD programs, and a handful of self-funded owners/drivers on the grid, Job represents a decreasing GTD ownership base that relies on fully-funded clients each season.
Evaluating the current climate, it would appear the type of customers needed by AJR is in limited supply.
"Through the years, it has been the professional successful businessman that loves to race sports cars that has been the bread and butter of sports car racing," Job said. "I think we are getting more and more away from that, and it is definitely forcing me to be more diversified, which is probably something I probably should have been doing all along.
"Even without the factories coming into GTD, the price to put a competitive team on track for the year has gone up quite a bit. It makes trying to find a new customer to return to GTD full season a difficult process because it is a big budget. It is minimum $2.5 million and the better part of $3 million if you want to take every opportunity to win.
"And then you are going to have about three quarters of a million dollars in capital assets just to buy a car and spare parts. So you are talking $3.7 million to run in the bottom class. The overall budget now for GTD is not that far off of what a Daytona Prototype budget was just 10 years ago. In 10 years, to run in the bottom class is as expensive as it was to run in the top class. I don't think that is a healthy business model."
Budgets aside, Job will continue his efforts to take part in IMSA's championship opener at Daytona in January, and will keep pressing to put together full-season campaigns in the WeatherTech Championship, among other series.
"It is definitely concerning me right now, but hopefully we will come through with something before the end of the year," he said. "I have always focused AJR on its primary role of having a top-level professional sports car program first before adding other things to our plate. The opportunities appear limited at the moment, so it's hard to say which program would come together before the others. We for sure want to be at Daytona and Sebring and at every other race if we can make it happen."