Alex Job Racing - Road America pole

Road America
qualifying, July 6, 2002

pole plus

Alex Job Racing will start from first and second place on the GT grid for 
Sunday's American Le Mans Series race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.  
Lucas Luhr took the class pole position in the No. 23 McKenna Xybernaut 
Porsche with a time of two minutes 12.862 seconds on the four-mile road 
course.  The pole position moved Luhr one point closer to a  tie with his 
co-driver Sascha Maassen, who leads the GT class standings.  Jörg Bergmeister 
was second in class in the No. 22 Porsche he shares with Timo Bernhard 
(2:13.516).

"It was really important because after [the last race at] Mid-Ohio I didn't 
get the point, so I really needed the point here for the qualifying and I did 
that in one lap," Luhr said.  "It was great because I took all the risk in 
one lap, and that's all we needed."

Bergmeister noted his lap was slower because of problems encountered with the 
gearbox in the morning practice session.  "We missed almost half of the 
second session and that was quite a problem in qualifying because we had 
slight setup problems," he said.  "But overall, second place is okay and 
hopefully we'll be better in the race!"

think lean

Axel Hohl, strategist for the No. 23 Porsche, believes corporate skills can 
enhance a team's race performance.  Away from the track, he works for 
Lockheed Martin, where leading-edge processes are the norm.

"One of the things we're doing at Lockheed Martin is lean thinking," he said. 
 "It's looking at processes and trying to eliminate the waste, trying to 
eliminate the extra steps that we take.  We have a lot of steps in this 
racing game and one of the things we have to focus on is how to minimize the 
steps because every step is a potential error.  If you can minimize steps, 
you not only get things done quicker, but you also reduce the potential for 
error."

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Sylvia Proudfoot
403 287 3945
spur07@cs.com