Millville: Team Stargate Worlds preview

It's been four weeks since Team Stargate Worlds' convincing performance at Round 2 of the 2009 Cooper Tires Atlantic Championship Powered By Mazda season race held at Utah's Miller Motorsports Park. It was there that #78 Simona De Silvestro garnered the pole position, led every practice session, and finally led every lap to go on to win the race. Her teammate #77 Frankie Muniz also had a stellar weekend by driving to a career best finish of fourth place. This week the team is back in action for Rounds # 3 and # 4 at the New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, New Jersey and they are looking to continue the momentum they started 4 weeks ago.

For her part De Silvestro arrives at New Jersey second in the championship standings, trailing first place Jonathan Edwards by a mere 5 points. In what was only her second career win, her performance at last month's Utah Grand Prix not only put her amongst a rare group in history of women who have won a professional motorsports race, but it also elevated the whole Team Stargate Worlds group and raised the bar for the season. With a year end prize of 1 million dollars awaiting the series champion, Simona and the team both have two goals they are focusing on: to win and to leave this weekend leading the championship standings. Simona will have strong competition to contend with this weekend but she has experience and history on her side since it was her current race engineer Burke Harrison who helped Carl Skerlong win this exact race last year in dominating fashion.

De Silvestro's teammate Frankie Muniz shows up this weekend as the hometown hero. Muniz was born and raised in New Jersey before he embarked on his Hollywood acting career. With a heavy friends and family presence expected this weekend Muniz is looking to continue his quest for a podium finish which eluded him at the last race. The 4 week break also allowed Muniz to finally take care of an old foot injury that required minor surgery and the use of crutches. He now returns to New Jersey fully ready to tackle the task at hand. Last year's race saw Muniz locked in a battle with his current teammate De Silvestro where he would ultimately end up in tenth place.

Frankie Muniz, Driver No. 77 - "I'm really looking forward to this weekend. It really is a home race for me as I will have a lot of my family and friends here to cheer me on and coming off a fourth place finish at Utah, I'm hoping this is the weekend we'll get our first podium."

Simona De Silvestro, Driver No. 78 - "I'm pretty excited for this weekend because the last race we were so dominating and I believe that we can transfer that same game plan over to this race. I'm confident that we will start off with a good base with the car because my Engineer, Burke Harrison, won here last year with Carl Skerlong"

Imran Safiulla and Shane Seneviratne, Principals Of Team Stargate Worlds- "We are excited to get back to business. We have had success at this track before and we hope to be competitive again. This is a double header weekend and therefore important for us to be competitive and pick up some valuable championship points. The team has been working hard over the last few weeks and everybody is excited to get back to racing"

-credit: tsw