Derhaag Motorsports: No. 40 Preformed Line Products Daytona Prototype

Bingham and Ruhlman recover from qualifying race crash to finish thirteenth
at Phoenix Daytona Prototype race

Phoenix, AZ (May 16, 2006) ­ Despite getting caught up in a qualifying crash
that took out six of the top Daytona Prototypes in the Rolex Cup field,
drivers Chris Bingham and Randy Ruhlman and the Derhaag Motorsports team
recovered to finish thirteenth in the #40 Preformed Line Products Pontiac
Riley in Saturday night's The GAINSCO Grand Prix at Phoenix International
Raceway. Starting from the back of the grid, the drivers and team marched
the car forward through the twenty four-car field of "all-star" Daytona
Prototype drivers to a thirteenth place finish in class and a thirteenth
place overall finish in the 37-car combined DP and GT field.



Friday night, Phoenix was the site of a full points qualifying race to set
the race grid for the Rolex Cup cars. Midway through the 30-minute
qualifying race, a crash involving six cars, caught Bingham up on the tight
inner section of the 1.51-mile road/oval course. The incident that damaged
the front running cars, including the #40 Derhaag Motorsports Daytona
Prototype, prompted officials to suspend from competition Oswaldo Negri of
the #60 Michael Shank Racing team for his role in starting the wreck. Along
with the instigating #60 car, the qualifying incident took out the Crown
Royal car of Christian Fittipaldi and Eddie Cheever, the #40 Preformed Line
Products car, the twice-winning Ruby Tuesday Porsche of Long and
Rockenfeller, the Red Bull car of Darren Law, and the #4 car of Andy
Wallace.



Teams worked long and hard to repair the Friday night qualifying damage and
get the cars, some severely damaged, ready for Saturday evening's 250-mile
race. Despite the extreme heat, with air temperatures reported as high as
104 degrees during the day, all of the teams, including Derhaag Motorsports,
repaired their equipment and made the grid for the start of Saturday's race.
The 149-lap GAINSCO Grand Prix got under way at 7 PM for two hours,
forty-five minutes of racing as Round Seven of the Grand American Rolex
Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Special Reserve.



Ruhlman drove the first stint in the car and, after starting from the back
of the field, made his way to up to 15th place overall by Lap 32. At the
first of two yellow flag pit stops for tires and gas and the mandatory
driver change, the car fell back to nineteenth. Bingham took over the
driving duties and worked cleanly through traffic to get the car back up
front for the finish in thirteenth place in class and thirteenth overall in
the combined 37-car DP and GT field.



At the halfway point in the season, Derhaag Motorsports is currently
sixteenth in Team Championship points, including the three full points
qualifying races. Following this week's qualifying wreck in Round Seven at
Phoenix, and potential disaster of having a large number of cars not make
the race itself, Grand American has decided that the experimental format of
qualifying races was not successful. They will return to regular qualifying
sessions to set the grid for the remaining seven races of the 2006 Rolex Cup
season.



The Grand American Rolex Cup teams head next to the historic road course at
Watkins Glen for the Sahlen's Six Hours of The Glen on Saturday, June 3rd.
The race will be shown live on the SPEED channel at 2:30 PM ET.



Chris Bingham drove his CB Motorsports Daytona Prototype at Phoenix
International Raceway last year, but the road course at PIR was new for
Ruhlman, who last competed at PIR in 1989, when he sat on the front row of
the full oval. The driving pair of Bingham and Ruhlman with Derhaag
Motorsports scored a top ten finish at the Long Beach Grand Prix in only
their fourth outing in the #40 Preformed Line Products Pontiac Riley.



Randy Ruhlman came off a successful 2005 season in the Trans-Am Series with
wins at both the Long Beach Grand Prix and the Cleveland Grand Prix. Chris
Bingham, the two-time Grand American GTS champion, was a top competitor in
Daytona Prototypes last year.



Ruhlman was named the 2005 BBS "Most Improved Driver of the Year", won the
2005 Long Beach Grand Prix Trans-Am race and Cleveland Grand Prix, and was
runner up for the 2005 Trans-Am Drivers' Championship. Ruhlman makes the
record books as fourth in Top Ten finishes in Trans-Am history. Ruhlman from
Greensboro, NC has been a professional race car driver since his Rookie year
in Trans-Am in 1990 and has extensive racing experience, predominantly in
road racing in the Trans-Am Series, as well as in IMSA, ASA and the NASCAR
short track series.



Bingham, of Bellevue, Washington, is a professional racing driver with an
impressive resume and years of experience. He has competed in the Busch
Grand National Series, open wheel racing in Indy Lights, as well as IRL, and
has extensive endurance racing experience. As a two-time Rolex Sports Car
Series GTS champion, Bingham was nominated as one of the "Best Road Racers
of the Year" in 2002. He made his return to full time Rolex Series racing
in 2004, piloting the #15 CB Motorsports car, before joining the Derhaag
Motorsports team for 2006.



Derhaag Motorsports Pontiac Riley carries primary sponsorship from Preformed
Line Products with additional sponsorship logos of Coyote Closures®, Park
Place Ltd, KeyBank and McDonald Financial Group.



Preformed Line Products (PLP) is an international manufacturer and supplier
of hardware and support systems for the communications and energy
industries. Products include the COYOTE® Closure and GUY-GRIP® Dead-End used
in the telecommunications, cable and energy industries. Manufacturing
facilities are located worldwide in the USA, Canada, China, Brazil, Mexico,
England, Spain, South Africa, Australia and Thailand.



Cleveland-based KeyCorp is one of the nation¹s largest bank-based financial
services companies, with assets of approximately $92 billion. Key companies
provide investment management, retail and commercial banking, consumer
finance, and investment banking products and services to individuals and
companies throughout the United States and, for certain businesses,
internationally.

McDonald Financial Group offers comprehensive financial services to affluent
individuals from 87 offices in 15 states. As part of Cleveland-based KeyCorp
, McDonald Financial Group combines the capabilities of McDonald
Investments Inc.'s Private Client Group, member NASD/NYSE/SIPC, and Key
PrivateBank. McDonald Financial Group offers banking, estate planning,
financial planning, retirement planning, brokerage, trust, individual asset
management, insurance advice and services, and charitable giving counsel.



For further information about the drivers, sponsor, team, please visit the
following links:

Derhaag Motorsports http://www.derhaag.com/ <http://www.derhaag.com/ >