Christian Maloof, our very own Porsche motorsport editor, has officially accepted the offer to co-drive the Freedom Autosport #147 MX5 in the Grand-Am KONI Challenge Street Tuner (ST) division!
He will be partnering with Mark White for four races starting with the KONI race at Miami-Homestead Speedway on the weekend of March 13-15, followed by events at Thunderbolt (NJ), Watkins Glen (NY) and Virginia International Speedway (VA).
When we asked him how he felt about racing professionally, he told us a little story.
“When I first started high performance driving I was hooked on the hot pits,” Christian said. “I loved the numbers on my car but I wanted mine to be number 1!” When I found out no. 1 was generally assigned to the Chief Instructor, I set out to get the number for myself. Within a year I was instructing and within two I was my club’s chief instructor, proudly displaying the number 1 on my car!”
Fast Forward to 2009. “John and I were at Daytona for the Rolex 24 Hours and I told him my goal was to be in a Grand Am car next year,” says Christian. “Here we are a few weeks later, and I am accepting a ride with the Freedom Autosport Team in March!”
Christian will be partnering with Mark White in the #147 Mazda MX-5 for 4 KONI Challenge races this season. “The opportunity to drive with Mark was hard to pass up,” Christian says. “He has extensive driving experience in the Rolex GT, Koni Challenge and IMSA Lites. I have known Mark for a couple
of years and I have been hoping to work with him. I am optimistic that he and I will really gel in the car.”
Christian looks forward to his first race, less than two weeks away, “So far, everything has been easy. The guys at Freedom are really great to work with and they have put together a good race car.”
Congratulations to Christian for taking a huge step forward in his racing career!!!
Christian is Track Chairman and Chief Instructor for Porsche Club of America’s Rally Sport Region. He holds instructor certificates and race licenses from the MidOhio School and Skip Barber. He races a Porsche 993 3.8 RS in the German Touring Car Series (GTS) division with NASA. He may be reached at christian@christianmaloof.com or by visiting christianmaloof.com
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