Shane Lewis Returns to Site of First Grand American Success

AVONDALE, Ariz., September 8, 2005 - Phoenix International Raceway (PIR) has
always been good to Shane Lewis. While now living in Jupiter, Fla., Lewis
spent several years early in his racing career living and racing in the
Phoenix-area. In 2002, he captured his first Grand-Am Cup GS race at the
1.51-mile, 11-turn track in the Avondale, Arizona community. While always a
very successful driver, that win spurred-on his Grand American Rolex Sports
Car Series career which saw the 20-time 24 hour event participant hired to
drive the Southard Motorsports BMW-powered Daytona Prototype (DP) last
season. Now wheeling a Riley chassis powered by the German V8 for the Steve
Southard-owned operation, Lewis looks for the fast straights and tight
infield to play into the hands of the PAP-Parts/ OZEXE No. 3 in Saturday's
Phoenix 250.

 

"Phoenix has always been a good track for me," said Lewis. "The infield gets
pretty slick because it's just baked in the sun and doesn't get raced on as
much as the oval. So, you'd like to put a lot more downforce into the car
for that. But, if you do that, you're going to get eaten alive on the oval.
It's a tough track to find the right balance on. We ran pretty well there
last year when this race was in the spring. I'm hoping that we can carry
that into this weekend."

 

Adding to the expectations for Lewis this weekend is that the Phoenix 250
marks the first time in Rolex Sports Car Series history that the
thoroughbred Daytona Prototype racing machines will compete in a stand-alone
event. As is traditional in sports car racing, every other event since the
2000 creation of the Series has been run as a multi-class format. In 2005,
Grand American officials shrunk the number of classes to two; DPs and
production-based GTs. With the slower GT cars competing in their own race on
Friday evening, Lewis and the other Daytona Prototypes will not have to
concern themselves with getting involved in the battles between the slower
GT cars. Saturday's race should be a full-out battle for DP supremacy. The
21 Daytona Prototype field is scheduled to take the green flag for the
250-mile (166 laps) event at 7 PM (PDT) on Saturday, September 10.

 

"It'll be different without the GT cars in this race, for sure," Lewis
commented about the spilt race format. "This is something we've all been
asking for and Phoenix is probably the right place to try it. This track
gets pretty crowded and having half the cars out there will help both
classes. It'll give the fans two great shows."

 

PEE Channel will broadcast the race- which has a time limit of two hours
and 45-minutes- at 4 PM (EDT) on September 11th. Live timing and scoring can
be found at  <http://www.grandamerican.com/> www.GrandAmerican.com beginning
with Thursday's first practice (7:25 PM PDT) and including qualifying at
6:45 PM (PDT), Friday. 

 

For more on Shane Lewis please see www.ShaneLewis.com
<http://www.shanelewis.com/> . 

Southard Motorsports can be found at www.SouthardMotorsports.com
<http://www.southardmotorsports.com/> .