Mid-Ohio: Dyson Racing Saturday report

Weaver Takes Mid-Ohio Pole

Dyson Racing's Thetford / Norcold Lolas Start 1st & 3rd

LEXINGTON, OH, June 26, 2004 -- Bouncing back from a broken clutch line in practice, James Weaver first watched Dyson Racing teammate Andy Wallace set the early pace in qualifying for Sunday's American Le Mans at Mid-Ohio, and then saw Audi's Marco Werner displace Wallace from the top of the time charts. With just five minutes left in the session, the veteran sportscar driver cranked off a blazing lap to take the pole.

"The car was fast right off the truck," Weaver said after climbing from the #16 blue-and-white Thetford / Norcold prototype sportscar that he'll share with Butch Leitzinger in the 2-hour, 45-minute race tomorrow. "And Goodyear gave us a stonking tire," Weaver continued, using a British slang term that is best translated into American English as "excellent."

High-Speed Chess

Weaver explained that he'd watched the times being set by both Wallace and Werner before making his move. "We learned from our testing here a few weeks ago that with the work done on the track since last year, the surface is now quite abrasive, and in qualifying you don't want to do any more laps than you have to.

"Our best time here in testing a few weeks ago was a 1:12.3, so with the warmer weather I thought that anything below 12.5 would be pretty good," Weaver continued. "So, when Andy did a 12.3 and then Marco did a 12.1, I thought that was pretty spectacular motoring."

Spectacular motoring indeed; Weaver then blasted out a 12.1 of his own, actually 1:12.123, a slim 6/100ths of a second better compared with Werner's best in the Audi, 1:12.184, but good enough for the pole.

"I think that you can look at how close the times of the top three cars are, and see why we're expecting a very close and exciting race tomorrow," added Wallace, who will be sharing the #20 Thetford / Norcold Lola with Chris Dyson.

Focus On Testing

Team-owner Rob Dyson pointed out the advantage of not sending the team cars to France earlier this month for the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race. "This is a nice confirmation of everything we've done in the three months since Sebring. We benefited from staying home and testing. We're a smaller team, and we only have so many people and so many resources. It enabled us to work on the cars and work with Goodyear, assisting them in the development of a really good roster of tires."

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