They raced a Lotus in GT and a Porsche in GTC in the American Le Mans Series last year, but now ALMS stalwart Alex Job Racing has charged to victory at the Rolex 24 at Daytona with an Audi.

Last year’s AJR GTC class Sebring winner, Dion von Moltke (pictured above with team boss Alex Job); Brit, Oliver Jarvis; Italian, Edoardo Mortara and Portugal’s Filipe Albuquerque drove the No.24 Alex Job Racing R8 to victory in the GT class, greeting the checkered flag 1.476 seconds ahead of the No.52 car of Rene Rast to make it a 1-2 finish for Audi.

After starting fifth, the Alex Job Audi stayed in contention for the entire 24 hour journey before disaster struck with two and half hour remaining when the car was assessed a penalty for avoidable contact with the No.61 Ferrari.

Despite assertions from the Ferrari team that they hadn’t been hit, Mortara was forced to head to pit lane to serve a one minute penalty.

This put the car one lap adrift of the leaders and back in seventh place. However, clever pit strategy from the Alex Job Racing team over the remaining 150 minutes of the race not only put the No.24 car back on the lead lap, Albuquerque was able to drive into the lead.

The Audi squad faced a nervous final stint, uncertain as to whether they would need to make one final pit stop for a splash of fuel. Albuquerque’s late race pace actually enabled the team to call him in for fuel with a mere five minutes remaining and return to the race with a slim lead.

Despite late race pressure, Albuquerque was able to hold on to take the victory.

“I’ve been watching Audi for years and years and have owned their products in the past and always had a very high respect for their products, and when I got the phone call to potentially work with them here at Daytona, I was very honored that I got that call and just went to work very hard on coming up with some success here,” Job said.

“What can I say?  I’m a bit overwhelmed.  We’ll see what more this leads to, but you know, Audi has had an incredible history at Sebring, and it may have been the last race for Audi at Sebring, but now it’s the first one for Audi at Daytona, and I’m part of that.  I’m pretty overwhelmed.”