Juncos Racing's Conor Daly Secures Second Pole Position of the Season

Monterey, May 22, 2010: After achieving the fastest lap time in three out of the four official practice and test sessions at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend, Conor Daly secured his spot on the front row of the starting grid with his second pole position of the season and third career pole in the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear. Though the 18-year old set a pole-winning lap time of 1:20.875, Daly spent the end of today's qualifying session driving with a broken front wing, costing him what could have been as much as another .3 off his fastest lap time. The time that Daly lost in today's session, however, will hopefully help him surge ahead in tomorrow's race.

"We worked hard all weekend once again," said Daly. "Juncos Racing has done an incredible job working hard to get the car to work right. We were consistently quick all weekend, and today's qualifying session was at its best, so I was really happy about that. I'm really looking forward to riding this next wave of starting first in the race and hoping everything goes well tomorrow."

Tatiana Calderon had successful practice and test sessions this week and looked to be well on her way to producing her best qualifying session of the season yet. While Tatiana hoped to have the chance to qualify in the top ten positions today, her car didn't seem to feel the same. As the 17-year old waited to go out onto the track for qualifying, she experienced a last minute engine problem, causing her to miss the first several minutes of the session. By the time Calderon was ready to join the session, a red flag came out which halted her from getting in a decent amount of good laps, leaving the young Colombian with only several laps at the end of the session to try to qualify, ultimately putting her in the 16th starting position.

"I think I need to work on qualifying a bit more because sometimes a driver only has six laps to try to be fast," said Calderon. "Qualifying today was really hard. I lost three laps at the start of the session because of an engine problem, and then there was a red flag which also didn't help me much. I think tomorrow's race will be really good, though, because the car was very good. I'm ready to race my way through the field."

With good results today despite a couple of small glitches, it is clear Juncos Racing has some definite improvement up their sleeves to reveal in tomorrow's race. Round Three of the Star Mazda Championship will commence tomorrow at 9:15 a.m. PST at California's 2.238-mile road course of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. For more information, please go to www.juncosracing.com.