De Silvestro and Muniz Seek to Keep Team Stargate Worlds On Top

Mid-Ohio, August 6, 2009: Now that the Cooper Tires Presents The Atlantic Championship Powered by Mazda points chase has tightened up the Team Stargate Worlds duo of Frankie Muniz and Simona De Silvestro are looking forward to this weekend's event, the Acura Sports Car Challenge/Honda Indy 200 being held at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course with the hope of improving their point standings by a comfortable margin. With a talented field aiming for the same goal Muniz and De Silvestro, along with their crew, are going to kick it up a notch.

De Silvestro arrives at the Mid Ohio race track leading the points chase with 119, just 5 points ahead of her points rival John Edwards, who currently trails her with 114 points. The points chase this year has been close and if history is any indicator the Championship fight may well go down to the last race as it did last year when series champion Markus Niemela won the championship on the final laps of the last race. Thus far De Silvestro has had an impressive year. After dominating events at Utah's Miller Motorsports Park, New Jersey Motorsports Park and Lime Rock where she won 3 of the 4 races she's also had three top-3 finishes.

For his part Muniz arrives at this weekend's event tied with series champion Markus Niemela for seventh place with 48 points. The third year series participant has shown incredible progress this year. Muniz has not only completed all but 3 laps this year but he has finished an average of seventh place with his best finish coming at Round # 2 at Miller Motorsports Park, where he scored a fourth place finish. Muniz also has shown to be a tenacious competitor and for that tenacity he has been awarded the series Hard Charger award twice. Muniz hopes to use that competitiveness this weekend and transform that into a top-3 race finish.

Frankie Muniz, Driver No. 77 - “I'm really excited about coming to Mid Ohio and getting back into the car. The Team Stargate Worlds crew and myself will be ready and, collectively, we are absolutely capable of competing at a podium level.”

Simona De Silvestro, Driver No. 78 - “This weekend is going be important like every weekend has been. I think we are going to be strong. The team is doing great and I'm really confident in them. I'm hoping we can achieve our best. I'm really excited to drive at Mid Ohio with the Atlantic car. I think the experience will be a lot of fun.”

Imran Safiulla and Shane Seneviratne, Principals Of Team Stargate Worlds- “"We are eager to get back into action. We continue to maintain a very narrow lead in the points and hope we can have a productive outing this weekend. We will have a few of our sponsors here and look forward to putting on a good show for them."