Shane Lewis To Close First Daytona Prototype Season at California Speedway

Shane Lewis To Close First Daytona Prototype 

Season At California Speedway

 

 

FONTANA, Calif., October 29, 2004 - Shane Lewis returns to his native
California for Sunday's Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series' season
finale at California Speedway. Lewis, lead driver of the No. 7 PAP
Parts/ Southard Motorsports BMW FABCAR, started his journey to
professional sports car racing at Willow Springs Raceway near his
hometown of Lancaster. Now living in Jupiter, Fla., Lewis hopes the
Rolex Series Lexus Grand American 400k endurance sports car race will be
the highlight of his first season in the Daytona Prototype series.
Despite years of success in major motorsports series and events around
the world, Lewis will be making only his 12th start in a Daytona
Prototype. It is the series' second full season of competition. The
former California State High School Bull Riding Champion has earned
three top-ten finishes thus far in Rolex competition this season. The
visit to the 2.8-mile, 21-turn road course, which utilizes large
portions of the California Speedway oval, is only Lewis' second trip to
the Fontana-area track. In his only previous start here, in 2002, Lewis
led much of the event in a Grand-Am Cup Corvette before his day ended
with a mechanical failure. 

 

Lewis has been busy since the most recent round of the Rolex Series at
Barber Motorsports Park. As a highly sought-after test and development
driver, Lewis has been doing extensive testing this week at
Homestead-Miami Speedway (HMS). Lewis lapped the oval's infield road
course for two days in a Pontiac-powered Riley chassis finding a
baseline for a new Daytona Prototype team. The test also helped the team
learn the 2005 spec Hoosier Racing Tire. Running lap times competitive
with the fastest laps turned during the recent Rolex Series race weekend
at HMS, the test was deemed a success as Lewis boarded a plane for
Fontana late Thursday. 

 

The Rolex Series Lexus Grand American 400k at California Speedway can be
seen live on PEE with a 4 pm (ET) green flag on Oct. 31. Live timing
and scoring of the race, qualifications and practice can be found at
<http://www.grandamerican.com/> www.grandamerican.com. 

 

quotes,

Shane Lewis: "I was born and raised in Southern California. So, I'm
really looking forward to having old friends and family coming out to
see the Daytona Prototypes and cheer the team on. I want to finish the
season on a high note with a good, solid finish. That'll give the team
momentum going into 2005. While plans are not set in stone yet, we are
working hard on next season. It was a rush for me to get to Fontana. I
was doing Hoosier tire testing in Homestead the last two days and caught
a late plane out to be in the car on Friday. While I am looking forward
to 2005 and the new Hoosier Tire deal I can't praise Goodyear enough for
the awesome job they have done. They have helped this series grow and
were there since the inception of the DPs. We're going to miss them.
But, the Hoosiers are very good and it's exciting to have something new
to work with. I'm really looking forward to the 2005 season. I think it
will be a great year for the series and the fans. It's going to be
important to be on your game next year. With so many new cars and teams,
plus all the strong teams that have a few years under their belt, 2005
is going to be an awesome season of racing."

 

For more on Shane Lewis please see
<outbind://48/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/homestead/ww
w.shanelewis.com> www.shanelewis.com. To learn more about Southard
Motorsports, please visit
<outbind://48/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/homestead/ww
w.pap-parts.com> www.pap-parts.com or
<outbind://48/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/homestead/ww
w.autoassets.com> www.autoassets.com.