Allmendinger Earns Fifth Place Start at Portland

Champ Car Grand Prix of Portland
Round 4 of 16
A.J. Allmendinger, #10

Qualified 5th   59.654/118.825 mph

Allmendinger and RuSPORT continue to make their mark in the Champ Car paddock with the American rookie earning a
career-best fifth place starting position in just his fourth race for Sunday's Champ Car Grand Prix of Portland.  His
previous best start was eighth at the season-opener Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The first-year RuSPORT team has both entries in the top-10 with teammate Michel Jourdain Jr. starting eighth.

Allmendinger turned his fast lap utilizing this weekend's softer "alternate" tire from Bridgestone.


A.J. Allmendinger

"Bridgestone's alternate tires definitely have more grip, which helped our qualifying effort.  I made a bad call
though.  (Senior Race Engineer) David (Brown) wanted to take some front wing out of the car because we
thought it would go loose.  I thought that the car had enough under steer that it would be perfect, but it turned
out to be very loose.  I guess it shows you should listen more to the guy who gets paid to set-up the car, rather
than listening to the driver.  I don't think we had enough speed to get pole, but we maybe could have gotten
(fourth place qualifier) Justin (Wilson).  I'd rather start fifth on the inside than fourth anyway, so I'm very happy
with this effort.  We have a good race car, so if we just make the right calls during the race we'll go well."


Jeremy Dale, Team President

"I said yesterday that AJ had a good day, and he had another good day today.  The most encouraging thing
about today is that they know exactly what mistakes they made.  They've been able to identify those mistakes,
so that means there's more potential in the car.  That's what we need.  We don't need to be going fast and not
understanding why.  We need to go fast, understand why, and figure out how we can make the car quicker.
It's the foundation of this team to do that.  Also, I think that AJ is not too disappointed to be on the inside of the
race track rather than the outside."