ACRL: Phoenix qualifying report

QUALIFYING - ROUND TWO:

Super Sports 2000
Peter Zarcades took his ninth consecutive pole position and second pole of the 2001 season in his highly developed Pennzoil Swift DB5. Zarcades, driving for Team Las Vegas, was the only driver to post a time below the magic one-minute mark, turning a 59.981 lap early in the session. The next three qualifiers, Brad Pierce (Team Las Vegas, Carbir), Fiorenzo Tirinnanzi (Team Hollywood, Carbir) and John Lombardo (Team Hollywood, Carbir) all had their times disallowed by Chief Steward Wally Smith for "mechanical irregularities". The three will start tomorrow's race at the rear of the Super Sports 2000 field. The race start will be a split grid with the Sports 2000 and Sports 1600 cars lined up behind the faster Super Sports 2000 machines. The Chief Steward's action places Marvin Jones of Team Denver in the outside front row position in his Carbir. Margie Smith-Haas of Team San Diego solved her overheating problems, which were traced to a missing water pump belt, but the handling of her Falcon was still not right, and she did not improve on the first qualifying session's time.

Sports 2000/Sports 1600
Dan Dubrovich marginally improved his first-round qualifying time, lowering the mark from 1:01.964 to 1:01.921 in his Team San Diego Doran, and locked up his second pole position of the season in class. Problems continued to plague Team Salinas. In addition to the retirement of David Jansen with a broken engine, Dave Ferguson had to swap engines when he lost oil pressure in the primary powerplant. Unfortunately, the replacement engine began running hot immediately, and Ferguson missed the second qualifying session entirely. However, his time of 1:02.618 in the first session held up for the outside of the front row in the S2 class, and the one bit of good fortune in an otherwise dismal weekend for Team Salinas. Jeff Littrell of Team Denver will start his Swift in the third starting position in S2, followed by new ACRL competitor John Fujii (Las Vegas, Swift), Jay Messenger (San Diego, Swift), Doug Ota (Denver, Swift), and Gary Holcomb (Hollywood, Swift). Paul Schroeder finally got to run a whole session, and posted a 1:07.661 as the lone Sports 1600 in the field.

The ACRL field will take the green flag at 5pm Saturday for their second race of the 2001 season.

-ACRL