Mosport: BAM! Friday practice report

fast four

BAM! (British American Motorsport) was fifth-fastest in the GT class during opening-day practice for the American Le Mans Series race at Mosport International Raceway. Sascha Maassen, driving for BAM! for the first time, covered the 2.459-mile road course in one minute 20.244 seconds. He is sharing driving duty in the No. 43 YES Network Porsche 911 GT3 RSR with Leo Hindery, Jr.

"For me this is not a new team. Even though I'm driving for it for the first time, I feel like I'm in a family. I've known a lot of the people on the team for a long, long time," Maassen said. "The car is not yet at its limit. I think we can improve and I hope we can then go maybe a tenth [of a second] or two quicker."

Oprah!

Leo Hindery, Jr. was a driving force in creating the Oxygen women's network. He and one of the founders, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, first met through their mutual commitment to philanthropic endeavors.

"It was clear that the multi-channel industry had not paid enough attention to women and to women's programming," Hindery said. "At the time, I was president of TCI, the world's largest cable television company. Along with Gerry Laybourne, Caryn Mandabach and Oprah Winfrey, we collectively launched the channel now known as Oyxgen. TCI was the first cable company in the country to commit, sight unseen, to Oxygen, which gave it the impetus to become the successful alternative to Lifetime that exists today. It's a real compliment to the founders that they had the vision and others had the courage to see that we got this type of programming up."

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