ATLANTICS: Mid-Ohio Preview, The Green Acres Enigma
11 August 1999
THE GREEN ACRES ENIGMA
Green Acres is the place for me, farm livin' is the life for me, land
spreadin' out so far and wide, keep Manhattan just give me that countryside
- Theme song to 1960's TV show "Green Acres"
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1. Lynx Racing's latest CART FedEX hot prospect, Buddy Rice, qualified 5th
and finished 2nd in last year's KOOL/Toyota Atlantic race at the Miller
Lite 200 at Mid-Ohio.
2. It will be a busy weekend for Lynx with Rice and teammate Mike Conte at
Mid-Ohio along with Lynx's affiliated F2000 team DSTP Motorsports and
driver Bobby Oergel; Sara Senske, fresh off a victory in the Women's
Global GT race at Portland, will race her Star Formula Mazda at
Thunderhill
3. Lynx Racing is the only championship-winning racing team owned by women,
Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty. DSTP is also owned by a woman, Dede
Rogers and run by a woman, Pam Griffith.
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If there is a racetrack in America that fits the image of Green
Acres, it's the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The enigma, of course, is that
Mid-Ohio is most famous for high-tech racing cars howling at top speed
through the hills and valleys of a place that you get to by turning left at
"Steam Corners."
Mid-Ohio will be living up to its name again this weekend when the
KOOL/Toyota Atlantic cars return as part of the annual CART FedEx invasion
called the Miller Lite 200.
Lynx Racing's latest CART FedEx hot prospect, Buddy Rice, qualified
fifth and finished second in this race last year. Rice's enigmatic style
-- a cool-headed hard charger -- has led him to a succession of podium
finishes, but at Mid-Ohio he's looking to break formation and stride first
into the winner's circle.
"Mid-Ohio is like a really smooth, U-drive roller coaster, and
roller coasters are one of my favorite things," says Rice, 23, of Phoenix,
Arizona. "We had a tough weekend here last year, but a reasonably good
finish after a heroic effort by the team. We've learned a lot about the
cars between then and now, and everybody at Lynx Racing is hungry for a
win... me most of all."
Rice's Lynx Racing teammate, Mike Conte, had an equivocal weekend
at Mid-Ohio last year, qualifying 18th and finishing 19th while driving for
another team.
"Mid-Ohio is actually a better track for us than it is for the
Champ Cars," says Conte, 30, of Seattle, Washington. "It's quite narrow
and the CART races tend to become processions, but there's just enough room
for us to pass each other. With it's wide variety of turns and elevation
changes, this is one of the hardest tracks to set up, and it changes
dramatically from first practice on Friday to the race on Sunday. The
Champ Cars lay down so much rubber that if you dropped a tennis ball on the
racing line it wouldn't bounce. It's a challenge, and all the more
rewarding when you get it right."
Lynx Racing's history in the KOOL/Toyota Atlantic events at
Mid-Ohio includes victories, championships and graduations. Patrick
Carpentier won in 1996 as part of his 9-victory, 8-in-a-row-from-the-pole
season - and went on to become the 1997 CART Rookie of the Year. He now
drives for Player's/Forsythe. Alex Barron won for Lynx in 1997, part of
his only season in Atlantic, during which he won both the Atlantic Rookie
of the Year award and the series championship. He drove 1 ½ seasons for
Dan Gurney's All-American Racers, and this year has driven for Roger Penske
at Michigan and will again at Chicago. Last year's Lynx standout, Memo
Gidley, drove four CART FedEx races for Walker Racing earlier this year and
will be in the Payton-Coyne/Herdez car at Mid-Ohio.
Also competing at Mid-Ohio will be Lynx Racing's associated team,
DSTP Motorsports, which campaigns Bobby Oergel in the U.S. F2000 series.
Lynx and DSTP share engineering and driver coaching personnel, and the last
three Lynx drivers, Gidley, Barron and Rice, all came up through the DSTP
team.
Half a country away, Lynx Racing driver Sara Senske will be
competing in the Star Formula Mazda race at the Thunderhill Raceway in
Northern California. Formula Mazda is the step on the open-wheel ladder
immediately below F2000, a step she is likely to make for the 2000 season.
Senske's most recent triumph was winning the third round of the innovative
new Women's Global GT series at Portland. Created by motorsports
entrepreneur Don Panoz and famed female racer Lyn St. James, the WGGT pits
top female drivers from around the world against each other in identical
Panoz Esperante race cars. Senske qualified on the pole, led every lap,
set the fastest lap of the race and won by a margin of 27 seconds.
Lynx Racing, owned by Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty and now entering
its ninth year of operation, is both a championship-winning racing team and
a unique driver development program. The team's mission is to seek out
young drivers with championship potential and provide them with the
training, resources and opportunity to realize that potential and make the
jump to auto racing's 'major leagues.'
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For further information on Lynx Racing and its drivers, please
visit the team's web site at www.LynxRacing.com, or telephone team public
relations manager Peter W. Frey at (818) 909-0985 - office / (818) 398-5733
- cell phone / (818) 909-0922 - fax. Mike Conte also has a web site that
covers both his Atlantic activities and sports car racing at
www.MikeConte.com.
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Mid-Ohio Event Schedule:
Thursday, August 12
8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. U.S. F2000 Testing
1:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. U.S. F2000 Testing
Friday, August 13
8:45 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. U.S. F2000 Practice
9:30 a.m. - 10:10 a.m. Toyota Atlantic Practice
1:45 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Toyota Atlantic Preliminary Qualifying
4:45 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. U.S. F2000 Qualifying
Saturday, August 14
8:00 a.m. - 8:40 a.m. U.S. F2000 Warm-Up
11:15 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. Toyota Atlantic Practice
3:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Toyota Atlantic Final Qualifying
3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. U.S. F2000 Race
Sunday, August 15
9:00 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. Toyota Atlantic Warm-Up
11:50 a.m. - 12:50 p.m. Toyota Atlantic Race / 30 Laps
Mid-Ohio Toyota Atlantic ESPN 2 Television Broadcast:
Saturday, August 21 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Next KOOL./Toyota Atlantic Race:
Saturday, August 21 / Target Grand Prix / Chicago Motor Speedway