Rookie Foss Scores Maiden World Challenge Touring Car Pole at Mosport

CANADA, May 16, 2009: Rookie Eric Foss, of Fort Worth, Texas, captured his first-career SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge Touring Car pole Saturday in preparation for this afternoon’s Round Three race at Mosport International Raceway, part of the Victoria Day Speedfest weekend. Canadian Kuno Wittmer will start second.

On a drying track, Foss topped the 20 –minute session turning his fastest lap, a 1:34.056 (94.118 mph) on his 11th, and final, tour around the 10-turn, 2.459-mile circuit in the No. 75 MAZDASPEED/Stoptech/Racinghart MAZDA6.

“It is just awesome,” Foss said of his first-career pole in his third race. “The fact that Mazda gives us this opportunity [to race is great]. They gave Jason [Saini] the same opportunity last year. The crew was joking around that I had to do something in my third race, like Jason did last year. I am just trying to live up to the bar that he set. He did an awesome job last year. Having Jason and Charles [Espenlaub] as teammates and being with a championship winning team at TriPoint, makes things a lot easier.

“We’ve been pretty good on the chassis setup all weekend. I think it’s really showed in the wet. The car was really balanced, really neutral and really easy to drive. As the track dried out, the car came in better and better. The track conditions were constantly changing and you had to try to adjust to them and do what you could to adapt.”

Wittmer, who topped the charts for a portion of the session, turned his fast time of 1:35.022 (93.161 mph) on his final lap. The Montreal driver started the session on rains, as did the all of the RealTime Racing cars, but switched to dry tires mid-session on his No. 44 Acura/RealTime/Red Line Oil Acura TSX.

James Clay, of Blacksburg, Va., lurked just out of the top five for most of the session, but was the final car across the finish line and jumped to third in his No. 36 BimmerWorld/GearWrench BMW 328i with a time of 1:35.094 (93.091 mph).

Pierre Kleinubing (No. 42 Acura/RealTime/Red Line Oil Acura TSX) and point leader Jason Saini (No. 74 MAZDASPEED/Stoptech/Racinghart MAZDA6) completed the top five.

Today’s SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge Touring Car Round Three race will make its standing start at 3:10 p.m. (EDT). Check out world-challenge.com for live timing, notes and streaming audio.