Rocketsports Racing San Jose Report - Saturday
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Heather Haupt ▪ cell: (517) 927-8472 ▪ e-mail: heatherh@rocketsportsracing.com THE DICE KEEP ROLLING BUT NOT IN FAVOR FOR ROCKETSPORTS DURING SECOND DAY IN SAN JOSE SAN JOSE, Calif. (July 30, 2005) – Qualifying results did not reflect the times run today by the Rocketsports Racing duo of Timo Glock and Ryan Hunter-Reay as they start further back on the starting grid for tomorrow’s Taylor Woodrow Grand Prix of San Jose than expected. The morning brought on yet another challenge in downtown San Jose, as changes were made overnight to the track. A new chicane was added to the 1.448-mile temporary street course approximately 2/3 of the way down the front straightaway, in addition to Turns 1 and 2 being widened, and a fence was moved back in Turn 4. Drivers had to go out and experience an altered track from what they worked hard at learning on Friday. However, that did not seem to affect the Rocketsports team, as both drivers continued to run lap times in the top five. Glock’s session ended early with a broken left rear upright, after the rookie brushed the wall while sitting fourth quickest. With the positive momentum from yesterday’s second practice, that saw both Glock and Hunter-Reay in the top ten, the team headed out for qualifying. After the 15-minute warm-up session, Hunter-Reay was eighth and Glock was tenth. Once the official qualifying session began, Glock immediately was sitting in the top five. As the luck of the draw would have it, the red flag came out. Once it went green, it was not long until another red came out. Hunter-Reay was trying to find a clear track to get a good run, but was having problems doing so at the start of the session. Once he found that clear track he was looking for, but a braking issue caused the lack of speed needed to run a good qualifying lap all afternoon. Tomorrow’s inaugural Grand Prix of San Jose will see Glock starting as the top rookie and seventh on the grid, while teammate Hunter-Reay will be further back starting 15th. The start of Round 8 of the Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford will take the green flag tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 p.m. local time, and can be seen live on SPEED Channel. A 30-minute pre-race show will air starting at 4:00 p.m., with race coverage beginning at 4:30 p.m. Timo Glock #8 DHL Global Mail/Rocketsports Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone “It is just the way our luck continues to go, it is really a shame. The DHL Global Mail car was just as good as it was yesterday, if not better, but I never had the chance to really tell. At the start of the qualifying session things were looking very good. I was a 100% sure that we were going to be the quickest behind the Newman/Haas Racing cars. However the red flags, and a mistake on my part, caused us to be slower today. We lost like three minutes fixing a toe link that broke in the rear – that could have cost us the lap we needed to be in the top three. Seventh is not a bad place to start, as it is always good to start in the top ten, it is just a shame that we knew we had a good car that we couldn’t have gotten it higher up in the starting grid. I want to thank my team, they are doing an excellent job this weekend, and I hope to pay them back with a podium finish at the end.” Ryan Hunter-Reay #31 Cytomax Sport Drink/Rocketsports Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone “It is amazing that I ran 21 laps, and did not post a quicker time. I just couldn’t seem to get a clear lap. When I did, I kept locking up the brakes. The Cytomax Sport Drink car did not seem to be bad today; I think if we could have gotten a good lap in then the car would be sitting 7th, a result similar to yesterday. We are definitely not happy with our starting position, but we will make the best of it and develop a race strategy to get us back to where we were yesterday.” Subscriptions: [Champ Car Press Releases] Change subscriptions: http://rocket.cmagic.com/index.php?option=com_mamml&Itemid=&action=unregistered&type=unregistered&userid=1029&test=6a5e400455253ffe31d6baa62f1590c7