Grand-Am
VIR: SunTrust Racing qualifying report
Max Angelelli and Jan Magnussen, co-driving the No. 10 SunTrust Racing Pontiac Riley of Wayne Taylor Racing, will start Sunday's Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series VIR 400 from the inside of the third row after qualifying Saturday on the Virginia ...
Published: Apr 29, 2007, 4:57 AM
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Max Angelelli and Jan Magnussen, co-driving the No. 10 SunTrust Racing Pontiac Riley of Wayne Taylor Racing, will start Sunday's Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series VIR 400 from the inside of the third row after qualifying Saturday on the Virginia International Raceway road circuit.
Magnussen clocked a fast qualifying lap of 1 minute 45.790 seconds (111.277 mph) around the scenic 3.27-mile, 17-turn VIR road course that was fifth-fastest among 21 Daytona Prototypes entered in Sunday's weekend feature race. Earlier today, the SunTrust Racing team found itself working its way through various handling difficulties while recording the seventh-fastest laps of both the morning and early afternoon practice sessions. Angelelli and team owner Wayne Taylor won the inaugural race here for SunTrust in 2004, and they brought home a second-place finish here last season.
"It appears to not be a very good car in qualifying trim at this time, but these guys will figure it out by tomorrow," Taylor said. "They know what they have to do for tomorrow. The way things played out today, we realized that we needed to make a big change for tomorrow, so they just put a Band-Aid on the problem just to get us through qualifying. We had what we had for qualifying and, truthfully, Jan did a pretty decent job. Now, we know what we need to do from here and hopefully it'll make a big difference for us in the race."
"It's been difficult for us this weekend so far, and it's a little bit frustrating because this has always been one of our best tracks," Angelelli said. "But we set up the car as best we could for qualifying and hopefully the changes we make for the race will be good for us. It's not terrible to start fifth here, based on our past experience."
Last year, Angelelli and Taylor battled back from the 11th starting position to take the lead for 12 of the final 20 laps during one of the wildest finishes in Rolex Series history. Angelelli led a five-car freight train to the white flag, only to be shuffled back to second by the Alex Job Racing Porsche.
"We didn't have a pole car today, but we are continuing to make improvements and we are headed in the right direction," Magnussen said. "We improved the car some for qualifying, for sure, but just not enough to put us up front. For some reason we started quite far away from where I suspect we are going to end up. We are getting better all the time, only we're not taking the big steps forward like we want to. We're still searching for the big change that's going to move us to the front, but I'm confident we'll have it figured out in final practice tomorrow morning."
-credit: suntrust racing
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