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IRL: Greg Ray Shatters Phoenix Record

27 March 1999

Greg Ray shattered the modern day Indy Racing League track record at Phoenix International Raceway, recording the fastest lap of the day in practice for Sunday's MCI Worldcom 200. Ray, the 32-year-old from Plano, Texas, toured the 1-mile PIR oval in his No. 2 Glidden-Menards Dallara/Oldsmobile/Firestone in 20.731 seconds (an average of 173.653 mph). It was more than a full tenth of a second under the previous track record set here last year by Jeff Ward. Right behind Ray among today's top lap times were Scott Sharp (20.806 seconds/173.027 mph), Scott Goodyear (20.934/171.969), John Hollansworth (20.990/171.510) and Sam Schmidt (21.005/171.388). Practice resumes Saturday morning with qualifying set for later in the day. Race time is 2:00 p.m. Sunday. It will be televised live by Fox Sports Net at 4 p.m. EST.

GREG RAY - "We've been working almost exclusively on our full-tank setups and on making long runs. We're running well even with tires that have had 40 laps on them. That's very encouraging for Sunday. We'll start working on our speed setup before qualifying on Saturday morning. But, overall, things are going very well."

THOMAS KNAPP (General Manager) - "So far so good. This just back ups all that we've worked on in testing since (the season opener in January at) Orlando. We can be very fast with full tanks. We're very happy with our full-tank performance."

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