St. Pete: Flying Lizard qualifying report

Flying Lizard Fifth and Sixth in GT2 Qualifying for St. Petersburg

March 30, 2007 -- St. Petersburg, Florida -- In downtown St. Petersburg today, the Flying Lizard Porsches finished fifth and sixth in the GT2 qualifying session for tomorrow's race, the Acura Sports Car Challenge of St. Petersburg, the second round of the 2007 ALMS season.

With the temperature reaching a humid 90 degrees by this afternoon's session, teams were challenged to get their flying laps in. There has been very little setup and practice time in the compressed weekend schedule -- today is the first day on track for the teams with short practice sessions this morning and this afternoon prior to qualifying. The 11-car GT2 field has had some challenges today on the narrow track -- the No. 61 Risi Ferrari withdrew from the race after it suffered significant damage during morning practice and the No. 18 Rahal Letterman Porsche was damaged in this afternoon's session. Both drivers are fine. The red flags resulting from the incidents today shortened the GT2 field's track time even more.

Jörg Bergmeister took the No. 45 Porsche out for the qualifying session: "It was frustrating: we've been making incremental changes and had hoped to make more progress before qualifying but just ran out of time. The heat limited what we could do with the tires."

Teammate Lonnie Pechnik brought the No. 44 to sixth position. When asked about the conditions he said, "It's hot, hard to pass and the track is extremely slick - especially offline. Tomorrow is going to be very interesting racing."

Chief strategist Thomas Blam added, "Given what we saw today, we should see quite a few cautions tomorrow, which will affect everyone's strategy. But that can be hard to predict, for example at the Houston street circuit last year we had only one yellow during the entire race."

-credit: flm