GENTILOZZI TOP QUALIFYING IN DENVER

CYTOMAX SPORT DRINK 100

DENVER, Col. (August 12, 2005) Qualifying for the Cytomax Sport Drink 100 was led by Rocketsports Racing. Paul Gentilozzi, driving the No. 1 Jaguar R Performance XKR, set the fastest time around the 1.647-temporary street circuit with a time of 1:13.934 (80.683 mph). This is the 30th time Gentilozzi set the fastest time in qualifying in his 204 career starts. Tomy Drissi turned the second fastest lap in the No. 5 Four Brothers the Movie Jaguar XKR just 9 1/100th of a second slower than Gentilozzi. Rocketsports teammate, Klaus Graf turned the fifth fastest lap in the No. 7 Jaguar R Performance XKR. 

The Trans-Am series all-time wins leader, Gentilozzi, had one goal for qualifying, to be the fastest. The four-time champion turned his best lap as the session ended. “I had screwed up a lap before, I went long in turn one,” described Gentilozzi. “The car was just starting to come around, the pressure and tires and we were running out of time. So I had a good first third of a lap going and when I came in under braking I felt them want to lock, so I went long instead of locking up the tires. Then they said I have one minute left and Tomy has run a 14.0. I had one mistake on the last lap but drove hard the rest of the way. It was just luck that we got it.”

After setting the fifth fastest time in morning practice, the Four Brothers the Movie team found the speed to allow the Rockin’ Moroccan, Drissi, to challenge for his second career fastest qualifier award. For the past two events, the 1999 Rookie-of-the-Year has sat a top the speed charts with seconds left in the session only to be knocked to second place by Rocketsports team owner, Gentilozzi. “We’ll start fourth with the inversion but it’s good, we needed the point,” said Drissi. “I wanted the other two points, but he (Gentilozzi) is good. He knew he had to put it down. Qualifying was tight; the top three or four guys are separated by just a few tenths.”

Three-time fastest qualifier, Graf, had his hands full with learning the nine-turn circuit and qualifying at the same time after taking only two laps during morning practice. The German native will benefit from the series’ Fast Five rule inverting the top-five qualifiers and will start from the pole in tomorrow’s race. “It was difficult because of the red flag at the beginning of the session,” said Graf. “Once we got on the track there were only about six laps remaining and those were really my first laps. Being in fifth is perfect because I will get to start from pole position. So we’ll try to sort everything out and have a good session in the morning then we should be in really good shape for the race."

The Cytomax Sport Drink 100 from Denver is schedule for Saturday August 13th at 4:30 pm Mountain time. The race will air on SPEED channel Sunday August 7th at 1:00 pm Eastern Time.