Pirelli World Challenge GTS - Brown P10 At Tooele

TOOELE, May 1, 2012: — Paul Brown/Tiger Racing’s Justin Bell finished a solid tenth in the GTS division in Round 4 of the SCCA Pirelli World Challenge with his eBay Motors Ford Mustang Boss 302S Saturday at Miller Motorsports Park.

The car, which is also sponsored by Kenny Brown Performance, was strapped with reward weight after Bell won two of the first three races and finished second in the other one. His Mustang didn’t appreciate the area’s high altitude as much as the turbocharged cars did either, but Bell persevered and brought home a top-10 finish that will still generate important points towards the ultimate goal of helping Paul Brown/Tiger Racing repeat as the division’s champions.

Bell, of Los Angeles, qualified 12th on Friday with a time of 2:04.198 and an average speed of 88.349 miles per hour for the 3.048-mile, 15-turn road course near Salt Lake City. He had a terrific standing start and vaulted to eighth initially, and then settled into ninth place on lap two between two other Mustangs driven by Brad Adams and Dan McKeever.

McKeever passed him on lap three and Bell dropped one more spot on lap four when Alec Udell got by. Nick Esayian, who went on finish fifth, passed both Udell and Bell on lap five to drop Bell to 12th place. Bell ran his fastest lap of the race up to that point on lap six with a 2:04.760 (87.951 mph), although he would later surpass that in the event, which had a distance of 23 laps or 50 minutes of competition.

Bell remained in 12th place until lap 11, when he vaulted back into the top 10 after Bill Ziegler and McKeever slipped backwards. He spent the rest of the race in tenth position, trying to catch Udell. He drew as close as just 1.284 seconds behind the youngster but Udell was able to stretch the advantage out as the race continued with no full-course yellows. Bell continued to press hard, and he set his fastest lap of the race on lap 15 with a 2:04.313 (88.268 mph).

The standings at the front got scrambled at the end as some drivers made last-ditch efforts to win, but Bell wisely brought his Mustang home in one piece in the race, which was called the Privacy Star Utah Grand Prix Presented by Bondurant. Andy Lee ended up winning GTS in a Camaro over Colin Braun and Michael Galati’s Kias.

"Unfortunately the race weekend at Miller was the perfect storm for our Mustang in terms of the reward weight being substantial (after the success of our first three races), the air restrictor and the altitude,” said Bell. “Completing the negative scenario we had the Acuras and Kias benefiting the most from their turbo power. Basically we had to run around mid-pack and think about the only positive from the situation, which was that we will be dropping a significant amount of my additional weight heading into Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca."

“We knew this race had all the cards stacked against us with the altitude, small inlet restrictor and rewards weight,” said team owner Paul Brown. “Justin drove just as solid as he did in the other races; we just didn't have the legs for the altitude at Miller.”

Video streaming of the race will be posted in archives on world-challengeTV.com. The race will also be shown on the NBC Sports Network at 11 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, May 27.