Altbier Lagering

No need to rack it, there's no advantage to doing that. If it tastes good and has hit the expected final gravity with no further signs of fermentation going on, you can chill it fast. If it has some cleanup to do or is still fermenting, you should warm it up. I don't fart around with 2 degrees per day. If it's good, it's good. If it's not, warm it up. Don't rack it. Simple as that.

 

Would you happen to be kegging this eventually?

 

If you are bottling, and if the beer is completely finished, I would go ahead rack it to the bottling bucket add your sugar and bottle. Let them carbonate and once theyre carbonated enough lager the bottles until they are ready to drink. This way you transfer a minimum amount of yeast to express esters in the first place but plenty enough to carbonate the beer.

As I understand it, the reasoning behind chilling slowly is that when yeast are chilled quickly they express more esters (I've heard JZ reference something like 30 to 50% more). Sometimes that's a good thing for lighter flavored beers that may be less than ideal. It's just another one of the thousands of dials that you can use to control the outcome of your beer.