Petersen/ White Lightning To Start Third at Road America

Petersen/ White Lightning To Start Third at Road America

 

ELKHART LAKE, Wisc., Aug. 21, 2004 - Petersen Motorsports/ White
Lightning Racing will start the No. 31 Westward Ho Casino/ MMPIE/ PAWS/
Michelin Porsche 911 GT3 RSR third in GT class at tomorrow's Road
America 500. The American Le Mans Series (ALMS) qualifying session saw
Craig Stanton, who drove the Petersen/ White Lightning Porsche to the GT
class victory here in 2003, lapped the 4.048-mile course in a time of
two minutes, 8.919 seconds (113.038 mph). Stanton, of Long Beach,
Calif., turned his quick time on the second of four timed laps. His
fifth circuit was quicker but was slowed by traffic at the conclusion of
the circuit. Gridded 13th overall, the Michael Petersen-owned team
bested the old track record for GT by over two-tenths of a second. David
Murry, of Cumming, Ga., will start tomorrow's two hour and 45-minute
race for the Petersen/ White Lightning team. As has been the strategy of
the team in recent races, Murry, also an ALMS GT class winner, will
pilot the No. 31 Porsche for the first half of the event before turning
the wheel over to Stanton who will finish the race.

 

The Road America 500, the final 'sprint' race of 2004, can be seen live
on SPEED at 2 pm (EDT).

For more, please visit www.petersenmotorsports.com.  

 

quotes. 

Michael Petersen, owner/driver: "Once again we've qualified third ahead
of some of the other teams we need to be in-front of. There's at least
one team that doesn't seem to want to come up and run with us in
qualifying. So, we challenge everybody to race the entire weekend. We
are looking forward to tomorrow as we feel we have one of the best
prepared cars for the race. It has been clearly evident the last several
races that we have a very good race car. If the contact can be kept to a
minimum and we can have some luck from the racing gods, I think we will
have a very good result for the entire team. The guys have worked really
hard. And I know we are all starving for a victory and hopefully this
week will be it."

 

Craig Stanton, driver: "Here today we had two practice sessions and a
qualifying session at Road America. We attempted to get the car
balanced. We had a little bit of an issue gaining grip on the Petersen
Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing Porsche. Through a couple of changes
we were able to get pretty neutral at the end of the last practice
session. Qualifying went quite well. I thought we were going to be able
to get a quick lap on our second timed lap but the way the Michelin
tires came up to temperature, it turned-out to be on our fourth lap. Our
fifth lap was actually our quickest but we got held-up by another car.
The lap before ended-up being quick enough to get us up to third on the
grid. I am very excited about our chances in tomorrow's race. We've
looked at many strategies for the race and we'll see how the race
evolves. We will have four or five alternative strategies depending on
how the race goes.  The Porsche is running super here this weekend and
we have really gotten the Michelin tires working very well with the
number 31. So,we're very optimistic about tomorrow's race. "

 

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Digital images and complete team and driver bios available upon request.

Editors, please do not publish any contact information other than web
sites.  Thank you.

 

contact: Tom Moore, Petersen Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing, 

615-778-1614 (office), 404-229-3703 (cell), tom@darkhorsecom.com