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TRG Looking for Points in KONI at Barber Petaluma, CA, (July 14, 2009) - TRG's Grand-Am KONI Sports Car Challenge teams are ready to make Barber Motorsports Park a strong points paying weekend. The 200-mile race for the KONI GS cars will take the ...

Edited: Dec 21, 2009, 5:24 AM

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TRG Looking for Points in KONI at Barber

Petaluma, CA, (July 14, 2009) - TRG's Grand-Am KONI Sports Car Challenge teams are ready to make Barber Motorsports Park a strong points paying weekend. The 200-mile race for the KONI GS cars will take the green on July 19.

The 2.3-mile, 16-turn rolling road course should favor the nimble handling of the TRG GS class Porsche 997s. Duncan Ende and Spencer Pumpelly in the No. 39 DigiTrust Group/Adam's Polishes/Racer's Roast Coffee/ TRG Porsche 997 have a win at New Jersey Motorsports Park to go along with two podium finishes at Mid-Ohio and Laguna Seca. Ende is fifth in points with Pumpelly in eighth.

"At Barber you spend a whole lot of time in the corners compared to time on the straights," Ende said. "The corners are we make up time with our Porsches, so I am definitely looking forward to getting back to this track. With the nature of the straights it is a little hard to work through traffic here, but if we are running up at the sharp-end of the field we will be in decent shape. Besides looking like a pretty competitive track for us, Barber is where I had my very first race in a car, so it is always cool going back there, even it is a touch warm in July."

"Barber is the closest we race to my home in the Atlanta area so I have lots of friends and neighbors planning to make the trip," Pumpelly said. "Until Grand-Am runs Road Atlanta this is my home race. Barber should favor cars that are easy on tires. It is almost all corners so keeping the tires alive in the Alabama heat is going to be the key. Barber has big useable curbs so the car needs to be able to take full advantage of them and settle back down quickly."

John Potter and Andy Lally are currently tenth in KONI points. The duo will take their No. 41 Magnus Racing/TRG Porsche 997 to the track looking to maximize the handling aspects their car to the track that rewards a nimble car.

"We won the KONI race in 2007 which was the first ever win for TRG in the series," Lally said. "The track is wide and smooth and there are many off camber turns and quick transitions. Putting the power down coming off of the tight corners as well as the ones that are off camber is usually our biggest challenge. It is a little bit of a compromise because you need to be good in the fast stuff as well. I won here in 2004 and 2006 in Rolex Series, so it is a place that I like coming back to. The Rolex wins were both pivotal in winning the championship in each of those years. Barber certainly is a favorite of mine. It's also only a couple hours away from my house in Atlanta."

Kevin Buckler, TRG team owner, knows Barber holds a lot of promise for his Porsches.

"Barber is a track that is as close to tailor made for a Porsche as you can get," Buckler said. "The track is really all turns and the straights are not that long, with the longest having a chicane in the middle. Our guys will have to have the cars setup perfect and qualify well to keep those V8 monsters behinds us. Our first KONI win came at Barber back in 2007, there is no reason why we can't win again this weekend."

The KONI Challenge Sports Car Series race from Barber Motorsport Park will take the green at 8:20 a.m. on July 19 and be televised, tape delayed, on the SPEED Channel, July 25 at 12:00 p.m. ET.

-credit: trg

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