SPEED'S THREE DAYS OF COVERAGE FROM ROAD ATLANTA

Petit Le Mans powered by the Totally New MAZDA6 will see unprecedented coverage next week with SPEED providing three-day coverage from Road Atlanta. On the schedule is a one-hour preview special Thursday night with Friday's qualifying shown online and the race broadcast live on Saturday.

Similar to this year's coverage from the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March, SPEED will host a Petit Le Mans special starting at 7 p.m. ET Thursday, October 2. The show will originate pit side, previewing the race and providing a taste of on-track activity and off-track reaction as the race's night practice session unfolds. Then, on Oct. 3, qualifying will be streamed live by americanlemans.com and SPEEDtv.com starting at 3:25 p.m. ET.

On October 4, six-and-a-half total hours of race coverage from the penultimate event of the 2008 American Le Mans Series season starts at 11 a.m. ET with the start of the 1,000-mile sports car classic.

Long time sports car play-by-play announcer Leigh Diffey will anchor this year's coverage, as 1989 Trans-Am Series Champion Dorsey Schroeder and road racing veteran Calvin Fish provide color commentary from the booth. On pit road, former racers Brian Till and Chris Neville are set to be joined by sports car insider Jamie Howe to cover the many storylines throughout the weekend.

This will be the network's 10th year of broadcast coverage from the race's 11 years of existence.

"The Petit Le Mans special will celebrate the first 10 years of this great endurance race," said Rick Miner, SPEED Senior VP of Studio Production & Operations. "The show will also preview that Saturday's race, especially with the great background of night practice where we'll be able to interview drivers and get the impressions immediately after they leave the track."

This year's Petit Le Mans is stacked with star power, both in the driver's seat and on track. Like Sebring and Le Mans earlier this year, Peugeot Sport will re-engage its LMP1 battle with the dominant Audi factory team when it offloads a diesel-powered Peugeot 908 racer stateside for the second time this season. Highlighting the Peugeot driving lineup will be Nic Minassian, and former Formula One shoes Christian Klien and Stephane Sarrazin; both competed at Le Mans this past June. Among the other drivers competing in Petit Le Mans this year will be open-wheel stars Helio Castroneves, Ryan Briscoe, Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon, Marco Andretti and Dario Franchitti, along with Series regulars such as Marco Werner, Lucas Luhr, Gil de Ferran, David Brabham, Johnny O'Connell and many others.