Petersen/ White Lightning Sebring Qualifying - Bergmeister Takes Fifth in Time Trials Shootout

Petersen/ White Lightning Sebring Qualifying –

Bergmeister Takes Fifth in Time Trials Shootout

 

SEBRING, Fla., March 16, 2006 – The 2006 American Le Mans Series (ALMS)
season officially began today with qualifying for the 54th Annual Mobil 1
Twelve Hours of Sebring. 2005 ALMS GT2 Champion and defending 12 Hours of
Sebring class winning Petersen Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing driver
Jörg Bergmeister (Langenfeld, Germany) captured fifth on the GT2 class grid
for Saturday’s 12 Hour classic event. Demonstrating the intense competition
of the GT2 class for 2006, time trials for the classic American sports car
event came down to a 10-minute shootout between the class’s five marquees.
Bergmeister’s time of two minutes, 4.040 seconds was the second quickest of
the Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs just two-tenths slower than the quickest Porsche.
Bergmeister will be joined by his brother, Tim, and Nic Jönsson (Buford,
Ga.) on the outside of the 11th row, 22nd overall, for what is widely
considered the most difficult endurance race in sports car racing.

 

The red flag hurt the overall effort of the Michael Petersen-owned team.
Qualifying was stopped eight minutes into the scheduled 25-minute session to
remove a competitor’s car from the track. The stoppage came just as
Bergmeister began his “hot” lap. After a 17-minute delay, qualifying
continued for a 10-minute shootout for the class pole position. With one
heat-cycle complete on his Michelin Pilot racing tires, Bergmeister was not
able to take full advantage of his few remaining minutes on the track. He
turned his quickest lap on his fourth circuit of the 3.7-mile Sebring
International Raceway. A fifth, and quicker lap, was started but the car
bobbled half-way through the lap, low on fuel. That ended the quicker lap
and the Petersen/ White Lightning team’s opportunity at a second Sebring
pole position. 

 

Quotes: 

Dale White, team manager: “Fifth is not ideal and we would have liked to
have been the fastest Porsche in GT2. But, as a competitor, we are really
enjoying the competition out here this weekend. This is as tight as anything
we’ve seen in a long time and that is a lot of fun. I’ve said it before but
that’s why we’re here. The excitement for us is the challenge and beating
the best.”

 

Jörg Bergmeister, driver: “We had some bad luck in qualifying. When I went
out for my first flying lap at turn one I hit the red flag. So, we had an
extra heat cycle on our tires. After the red flag I had some problems with
traffic so I got just one clear lap. I think we left a little bit on the
table. We have to work on the race setup but I think we should look pretty
good compared to the other Porsches. Also, the Ferrari was not as far ahead
of us as I expected. I think we should be competitive.”

 

The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring can be seen live on SPEED Channel
starting at 10:30 AM (ET), March 18th. Live timing and scoring of each
on-track session can be found at www.AmericanLeMans.com
<http://www.americanlemans.com/> . Regular reports from the track can be
found at www.PetersenMotorsports.com <http://www.petersenmotorsports.com/>
throughout the day on Saturday, the 18th. 

 

More on Petersen Motorsports/ White Lightning Racing can be found at
www.PetersenMotorsports.com <http://www.petersenmotorsports.com/> . 

Please visit www.Porsche.com <http://www.porsche.com/>  for more on the
Porsche’s line of products.

For more on the ALMS, please visit www.AmericanLeMans.com
<http://www.americanlemans.com/> .