SunTrust Racing Qualifying Report

Alton, April 24, 2009: The No. 10 SunTrust Ford Dallara of Wayne Taylor Racing will start Saturday’s Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series Bosch Engineering 250 from the outside of the fourth row after qualifying Friday afternoon at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) in Alton.

Brian Frisselle, new full-time co-driver this season with Max Angelelli in the SunTrust Racing machine, navigated the 3.27-mile, 17-turn VIR circuit in 1 minute, 43.265 seconds (113.998 mph), good for eighth-fastest among the 34 car-and-driver combinations entered for Saturday’s 250-mile (or 2-hour, 45-minute, whichever comes first) event.

“This is really a disappointing result,” said Frisselle, a two-time race winner last season with the No. 61 AIM Autosport Ford team and the pole-winner last August at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville. “I was expecting to be in the top-five because that’s where this team belongs. I made a mistake on my last lap that might have cost us one more position. But even that’s not good enough. So we have to go back and find out what’s missing. We have some time to figure things out and come back with a strong racecar for tomorrow. It’s definitely a pressure-packed situation, showing up after three months of no racing, then practicing and qualifying all on the first day back. But that’s no excuse. For whatever reason, whatever it takes to drive the Dallara fast here, it hasn’t clicked just yet. We’ll figure it out.”

Today’s qualifying effort was Frisselle’s first with the SunTrust team after Angelelli qualified the No. 10 car seventh at January’s season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona enroute to a fourth-place finish with added co-drivers Wayne Taylor and Pedro Lamy.

“Obviously, we’re not happy with eighth in qualifying,” said Taylor, who co-drove the SunTrust car to victory at VIR with Angelelli in 2004. “Brian is better than that. I don’t know if something went wrong in the car, or what. I really don’t know. Something’s not quite right. We’ll have to go and figure it out. Two years ago, here, we felt kind of like this after qualifying (fifth). We worked and we worked and we came back and won the race. So, you just never know. We’ll just have to get creative again.”

The top-five in qualifying were the following teams:

1. Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (No. 01 Lexus Riley) with Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett (1:41.646 at 115.814 mph)

2. Penske Racing (No. 12 Porsche Riley) with Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas (1:42.233 at 115.149 mph)

3. Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing (No. 99 Pontiac Riley) with Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney (1:42.262 at 115.116 mph)

4. AIM Autosport (No. 61 Ford Riley) with Burt Frisselle and Mark Wilkins (1:42.475 at 114.877 mph)

5. Brumos Porsche (No. 58 Porsche Riley) with Darren Law and David Donohue (1:42.631 at 114.702 mph)

Race time Saturday is 2:30 p.m. EDT with a live broadcast set for SPEED-TV. Complete results from all on-track sessions, as well as live timing and scoring during the race, can be found at www.grand-am.com.