Michael Waltrip Racing.

MWR Co-Owner Rob Kauffman To Race At Petit Le Mans

CORNELIUS, N.C. – Michael Waltrip Racing co-owner Rob Kauffman will race the No. 61 AF Corse Ferrari 430 Italia in the 14th-annual Petit Le Mans sports car race at Road Atlanta on Saturday Oct. 1. Co-drivers Rui Aguas and Justin Bell will join Kauffman for the 1,000-mile/10-hour endurance classic that serves as a finale to the American Le Mans season.

“Petit Le Mans is one of the top endurance races in the world,” said Kauffman. “It’s both thrilling and an honor to race in such a prestigious event. Road Atlanta is as challenging as any track and this race attracts the best sports car teams in the world. Our plan is to expand our sports car racing in the United States. Running in this race is a big step toward that goal.”

eBay Mobile logos, along with a custom QR code scanable by any fan with a smart phone, will adorn the Ferrari throughout the week. Also on the car will be logos for the new web show - The World’s Fastest Car Show on eBay Motors. ( www.ebaymotors.com/wfcs) FIA GT World Champion and Le Mans winner Justin Bell will serve as host of the new show on the popular website and mobile app. New episodes are uploaded weekly as Bell takes viewers on automotive adventures and celebrity road trips. Future episodes will incorporate Bell’s efforts in the Petit Le Mans race.

“There are so many good things going on here. I get to race a beautiful AF Corse Ferrari at Petit Le Mans with Rob Kauffman whom I have come to greatly admire and we are bringing eBay Mobile along for the ride,” said Bell, 43, an on-air talent for Speed Channel. “I know we are going to have a lot of fun, but we’re also going there with plans to finish on the podium.”

A field of about 40 cars will take the green flag Saturday Oct. 1 at 11:30 a.m. In addition to the overall race at Road Atlanta, teams of two or three drivers per car compete for class victories in different categories, divided into Le Mans prototypes and grand tourers. Class winners of this event receive an automatic invitation to next year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. Kauffman and co-drivers will compete in the GTE AM Class.

Road Atlanta owner Don Panoz founded Petit Le Mans in October 10, 1998. The 1999 edition on the 2.5-mile, 12-turn course was one of the original events of the American Le Mans Series. The race drew more than 125,000 fans in 2010 with an estimated 650 million fans watching on television throughout the world.

Kauffman joined Aguas and MWR co-owner and founder Michael Waltrip at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. Transmission failure ended their race after 16 hours in the 79th annual running of the French classic.

Kauffman, a native New Yorker who lives in London working as the European manager of Fortress Investments, partnered with Waltrip in October 2007. From its 140,000-square-foot shop in Cornelius, N.C., MWR fields Toyota Camrys in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series for Waltrip, David Reutimann and Martin Truex Jr. as well as a K&N Pro Series East entry for Brett Moffitt.

MWR’s participation in international racing events is part of a worldwide business strategy and a way to promote the team on a global stage. In the last year, MWR’s international effort has included visits to Le Mans, the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England, Toyota Motorsports Festival in Japan as well as races and tests in Dubai, Belgium and Portugal.

ESPN3 will televise the Petit Le Mans race at 11:15 a.m. ET on Saturday Oct. 1 while ABC will show tape delayed coverage on Sunday Oct. 2 at 4 p.m. Follow all the Petit Le Mans action via www.facebook.com/michaelwaltripracing and on Twitter: @mwrteam and @justinbelltv.

About World’s Fastest Car Show

The World’s Fastest Car Show hosted by Justin Bell is a weekly web show that can be viewed on eBay Motors and eBay Motors Mobile app. With over 14 Million unique visitors per month and over 250,000 eBay Motors Mobile App users, the audience potential for World’s Fastest Car show easily surpasses that of most automobile related shows on television. The singular focus of WFCS is to ‘have fun with cool cars’. Each week viewers join Justin Bell and his car buddies and celebrities friends as they road trip, joy ride and visit private car collections and action-packed car events. WFCS is a joint production between Swirl.net and Justin Bell Productions. The show is directed by Nicolai Iuul of Ammo Productions. Visit www.ebaymotors.com/wfcs

About eBay Mobile

eBay launched its first application for the iPhone in July 2008 and has since become a leader in mobile commerce. Its core iPhone application, which is available free via iTunes in eight languages and 190 countries, has been downloaded more than 20 million times and allows users to fully browse and buy without leaving the application. eBay's portfolio of mobile applications surpassed 45 million globally since the launch of mobile in the third quarter of 2008. The eBay app for the iPad™ debuted in the top ten most downloaded free iPad® apps in the iTunes Store and delivers a dramatically different, visually compelling shopping experience to browse and purchase the vast selection of products available on eBay. eBay’s suite of mobile apps, including RedLaser, Selling, Classifieds and StubHub, make selling and buying possible virtually anywhere, anytime. In 2010, eBay’s mobile gross merchandise volume (GMV) — the value of all goods sold — was nearly $2 billion. eBay expects to generate more than $4 billion in GMV through mobile commerce in 2011.

RedLaser is a leading barcode-scanning mobile application for iPhone and Android™ and was acquired by eBay Mobile in June 2010. The app has more than 11 million downloads and is consistently a top three free utilities app in the U.S. Apple iTunes® store. Scan a cataloged item and prices across Google, TheFind, eBay, Half.com, Milo.com and Best Buy will populate for comparison – along with helpful product information. The RedLaser software development kit is used by more than 170 licensees, including Coupons.com, TheFind, The Knot and shopkick and stickybits. For more information on RedLaser, visit www.redlaser.com.

eBay Inc.’s PayPal™ division has been delivering mobile payments since 2005 and has a mobile app for iPhone®, Android™, BlackBerry® and Nokia phones, as well as SMS and WAP-based payments solutions. PayPal offers merchants an easy way for shoppers to checkout on mobile websites via Mobile Express Checkout and mobile developers can use PayPal for in-app payments using PayPal’s Mobile Payments Library. In 2010, $750 million in payments were transacted over PayPal’s mobile applications. PayPal expects to almost triple mobile payment volume in 2011 to more than $2 billion and grow to more than $7.5 billion by 2013. For more information on eBay mobile, visit mobile.ebay.com