AIM Autosport's Ostella Finishes Fifth At Trois-Rivieres

Woodbridge, August 17, 2010: AIM Autosport’s Formula Mazda team scored a fifth-place finish yesterday when David Ostella claimed the spot in the tenth round of the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear at Grand Prix Trois-Rivières. Walt Bowlin driving a second entry in the Star Mazda Masters Class completed just six laps before contact with the concrete barriers around the temporary street circuit ended his race.

Driving the #16 Global Precast car, David qualified tenth in Saturday’s qualifying session. Along with many drivers in the field, he was troubled by the perceived feedback through the brake pedal and found it difficult to extract the car’s potential on the famous street circuit. In a closely-matched qualifying session, his best time of 1m 02.498s put him on the outside of the fifth row with a speed of 140.97 km/h.

With just two competitors in the Masters Class this weekend, Walt had only one car to beat and he struck a blow in qualifying by putting his #23 Tampa Bay Jaw Surgery car in top spot in his class (17th overall).

AIM Autosport principal and Formula Mazda Chief Engineer, Keith Willis, explained that the Trois-Rivières Grand Prix circuit is a track that will change over the course of the weekend and advised his drivers that their cars were set up so that the track would come to them by race time.

When the 45-minute-long race began at 1:00pm, David had a decent start, but found himself boxed out and unable to advance. Racing on a street circuit, surrounded by concrete barriers makes it more important than ever to avoid trouble so David elected not to force his way forward.

Following his fine qualifying effort, Walt was disappointed to see his class rival, dart past him at the start. In pursuit of his classmate, he pushed uncharacteristically hard during the opening laps and on lap seven made a turn-in error. Unable to correct in time, his car clipped the inside wall and the resulting damage ended his run and caused the race’s first caution.

There were two cautions during the race and David was not able to capitalize on either, but he was able to take advantage of a fast car which, just as Keith had suggested, was suited to the track conditions on Sunday afternoon. Pushing hard in a car that was clearly capable of good pace, David set the second fastest lap of the race and made several positional passes to climb to fifth place by the finish.

“We had a good race set up and David drove well to get as much pace from the car as he could,” said Keith. “Walt was disappointed that, again, he showed improved performance, but he was not able to capitalize.”

The Star Mazda Championship now heads straight to round eleven at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., for a race on August 21.