For Immediate Release – May 29, 2004

Contact Kirk Knestis - [email protected]

Greensboro, NC – a team of four part-time sports car racers has confirmed its entry for the Charge of the Headlight Brigade 13-hour endurance race, October 22-23 at Virginia International Raceway. Among races on the Atlantic coast, this Sports Car Club of America (SCCA®) event is shorter than only the celebrated 24-hours of Daytona in Florida, and will run around a 3.27-mile circuit, in all weather conditions and well into the night.

PhilsTireService.com Team GTI will be looking for victory in the Improved Touring B class. Cars in this category are essentially stock and this particular 1996 Volkswagen sport compact has few performance modifications beyond KONI racing struts, uprated suspension springs, and extreme-duty brake pads from Cobalt Friction Technologies.

Driving duties will be shared by car owner Kirk Knestis (Greensboro, NC), Southeast Honda Challenge and ITC standout Scott Giles (Leesburg, GA), past SCCA® Run-Offs® bronze medallist Greg Amy (Middletown, CT), and Northeast division IT journeyman Evan Webb (Elkridge, MD). These amateur racers have pooled their resources to tackle this event because it is simply not possible to go it alone on an operation of this magnitude. Driver Scott Giles’ sentiments reflect another motivation for joining the team, however: “I've always wanted to do a long distance event like this one, but I'm not crazy enough to subject my own racecar to that kind of abuse.”

The team anticipates that a trouble-free run will cover more than 900 miles at an average speed better than 70 mph. Drivers will take turns in the car, running stints approaching 2 hours in length, between which an all-volunteer pit crew will perform service as required. The more heavily loaded front tires – Toyo Proxes RA-1 race rubber from Phil’s Tire Service, in Haverstraw, NY – will be asked to go two stints before changing. Early-season testing suggests that they can expect to average 11mpg on the track, a surprisingly high figure under race conditions. Even at that, increasing gas prices have forced adjustments to the budget for the event.

The PhilsTireService.com team is documenting the season-long effort toward its endurance-racing debut at http://it2.evaluand.com/gti – a site that will be updated with text and images describing modifications to the car in collaboration with Bildon Motorsports, logistical preparations for the event, and stories of the team’s adventures during the race.