ALMS

Road America: Petersen/White Lightning qualifying report

Petersen/ White Lightning To Start Third at Road America ELKHART LAKE, Wisc., Aug. 21, 2004 -- Petersen Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing will start the No. 31 Westward Ho Casino/ MMPIE/ PAWS/ Michelin Porsche 911 GT3 RSR third in GT class at ...

Published: Aug 22, 2004, 4:41 PM

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Petersen/ White Lightning To Start Third at Road America

ELKHART LAKE, Wisc., Aug. 21, 2004 -- Petersen Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing will start the No. 31 Westward Ho Casino/ MMPIE/ PAWS/ Michelin Porsche 911 GT3 RSR third in GT class at tomorrow's Road America 500. The American Le Mans Series (ALMS) qualifying session saw Craig Stanton, who drove the Petersen/ White Lightning Porsche to the GT class victory here in 2003, lapped the 4.048-mile course in a time of two minutes, 8.919 seconds (113.038 mph). Stanton, of Long Beach, Calif., turned his quick time on the second of four timed laps. His fifth circuit was quicker but was slowed by traffic at the conclusion of the circuit. Gridded 13th overall, the Michael Petersen-owned team bested the old track record for GT by over two-tenths of a second. David Murry, of Cumming, Ga., will start tomorrow's two hour and 45-minute race for the Petersen/ White Lightning team. As has been the strategy of the team in recent races, Murry, also an ALMS GT class winner, will pilot the No. 31 Porsche for the first half of the event before turning the wheel over to Stanton who will finish the race.

quotes...

Michael Petersen, owner/driver: "Once again we've qualified third ahead of some of the other teams we need to be in-front of. There's at least one team that doesn't seem to want to come up and run with us in qualifying. So, we challenge everybody to race the entire weekend. We are looking forward to tomorrow as we feel we have one of the best prepared cars for the race. It has been clearly evident the last several races that we have a very good race car. If the contact can be kept to a minimum and we can have some luck from the racing gods, I think we will have a very good result for the entire team. The guys have worked really hard. And I know we are all starving for a victory and hopefully this week will be it."

Craig Stanton, driver: "Here today we had two practice sessions and a qualifying session at Road America. We attempted to get the car balanced. We had a little bit of an issue gaining grip on the Petersen Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing Porsche. Through a couple of changes we were able to get pretty neutral at the end of the last practice session. Qualifying went quite well. I thought we were going to be able to get a quick lap on our second timed lap but the way the Michelin tires came up to temperature, it turned-out to be on our fourth lap. Our fifth lap was actually our quickest but we got held-up by another car. The lap before ended-up being quick enough to get us up to third on the grid. I am very excited about our chances in tomorrow's race. We've looked at many strategies for the race and we'll see how the race evolves. We will have four or five alternative strategies depending on how the race goes. The Porsche is running super here this weekend and we have really gotten the Michelin tires working very well with the number 31. So,we're very optimistic about tomorrow's race."

-p/wl-

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