Indy Lights - Daly Wins Long Beach

Long Beach, Apr. 18, 2011: MAZDASPEED driver, Conor Daly scored the biggest win of his career today in Long Beach, California, when he won round three of the Firestone Indy Lights championship. As he has in every race this season, Daly proved to be the fastest car on race day and in a display of speed, discipline and patience, he worked his way to the front from a fourth place starting position.

“I can hardly believe I’m standing here as a winner in Long Beach” said Daly. “I’ve been coming here since I was a young boy and just love everything about race weekend. I struggled a little with my rev limiter that was coming on before the end of the straight but otherwise I tried to attack when the time was right and conserve when the time was right”.

Daly moved to third place when leader, Irishman Peter Dempsey crashed at turn nine. On the re-start Daly went down the inside of Argentinean, Esteban Guerrieri in the brake zone at turn one to take second place. After reeling in Newgarden, he spent several laps attempting to find a way past, almost touching Newgarden’s gearbox at the hairpin at one stage. In the closing laps Newgarden made a critical error and Daly was through.

Daly missed all of Friday’s practice as he was returning from three days of GP3 testing in Barcelona, Spain that took place between Barber, Alabama and Long Beach. “I had good information available from my team mates for Saturday and my engineer, Chris Finch, knows what I like in the car set up. This morning in the final warm up session, we had to do a fine tune adjustment on the ride heights and we were ready for battle. The last thing Sam Schmidt said to me on the grid was to have patience - that paid off for me”, said Daly.

“Without a doubt, Conor is an exceptional American driver and we at Modspace are proud to support him”, said William Mann, director of Modspace motorsports. “His first three Indy Lights races should make people sit up and take notice”.

Ironically, Daly now leaves the Indy Lights series as the points leader as he will move to Europe to tackle his primary 2011 season program, the Formula One support series, GP3. His first GP3 races will be in Turkey, May 7th- 8th. He will do two more Firestone Indy Lights races later in the season in Trois Rivieres, Canada August 7th, and on the streets of Baltimore, September 4th.

Daly drives for Sam Schmidt Motorsports as part of a four car team based in Indianapolis. Daly is the reigning Road to Indy Formula Star Mazda champion. In 2011 he will compete in the European GP3 series (Formula One Support series) and a limited program in the Firestone Indy Lights championship. Conor’s dual programs are supported by Mazda, Modspace, Doug Mockett Companies, SAS International, Merchant Services LTD, Callcap and The College Network with additional support from Tom Lange Company, Alpinestars, Arai and St. Vincent Sports Performance.