Californian Craig Stanton Podiums At Home Track, Third Top-Four of Season

 

FONTANA, Calif., April 3, 2005 - Craig Stanton continued his top-four
finish streak at today's Grand American 400 at California Speedway with
a third-place in GT class. The third-round of the 2005 Grand American
Rolex Sports Car Series marked his first podium of 2005 bettering his
fourth-place finishes, in class, at the season-opening Rolex 24 At
Daytona and the most recent round at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Stanton,
who lives in nearby Long Beach, drove the second-stint of the two hour,
45-minute sports car race in the No. 80 Synergy Racing Porsche 911 GT3
Cup entry. Co-driving with David Murry (Cumming, Ga.) the long-time,
multi-series teammates started fourth in class and only fell from the
top-five when making pit stops. Stanton's finishes place the 2004
Grand-Am Cup champion among the Series' elite performers this season and
sends a serious message about his effort to challenge for the 2005 GT
class Rolex Series championship. 

 

Stanton- an avid athlete that competes in multi-team adventure races to
train for driving- ran the car's fastest lap of the day on the 80th of
83 laps turned by the GT class competitors. The time of one minute,
43.660 seconds, was just narrowly one second slower than Murry's
qualifying lap. Not only did today's result continue the Glyco Max
Performance Drink driver's streak for the '05 season, it also carried-on
his success at the Fontana speedway. It was on the last turn, of the
last lap, of the last race of the '04 season here that Stanton clinched
his Grand-Am Cup title. The hometown hero, who finished second in 2004
Porsche Cup competition for non-factory backed drivers of Porsche race
cars in every major international series, continues to solidify himself
as one of top-performing drivers of the Porsche 911 race cars in the
world. 

 

Craig Stanton: "We got 'wind-out' on Thursday and that hurt us because
with that day canceled, we didn't get a chance to develop some of the
things that we needed to. On Friday we didn't make the progress we had
hoped for. We ended-up making a bunch of changes going into qualifying.
Dave went out and said that the car was the best we have had. Not only
were the guys working on the car, but they were also really working on
pit stop practice. They got down to about 45 seconds, which I think is
pretty impressive, and that made a big difference in the race. We
couldn't really run with the BMWs or the Aasco car but we worked our way
up. It was a slow moving process, a real chess game. I really had to
manage my tires. If I went out and ran with the cars around me, I'd lose
the grip of the tire. So we drove as hard as we could without losing the
tires so I'd have something for them at the end of the stint. We moved
up to fourth on a restart and got the 36 car on the inside under braking
going through traffic. It was pretty wild but David didn't touch any
other cars and I didn't either. The team is working really, really well
together. This is for them. Life is good right now in the Synergy camp.
And, I'm still feeling the benefits of the Glyco Max after nearly two
hours in the car. I feel like I could go do a ten mile run right now."  

 

 

 

For more on Craig Stanton please visit  <http://www.craigstanton.com/>
www.CraigStanton.com. To learn more about Glyco Max at
<http://www.glycomax.com/> www.GlycoMax.com. Information on Synergy
Racing can be found at  <http://www.synergyracing.com/>
www.SynergyRacing.com.