Despite Early Rain Delay De Silvestro Succeeds In First Oval Qualifying Effort

KANSAS CITY,May 1, 2010: As part of this weekend’s Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway, Simona arrived this morning looking forward to completing the scheduled 2 practice sessions before taking part in her first oval qualifying effort as a rookie in the IZOD IndyCar Series. Rain would quickly emerge and disrupt her plans. Despite the rain delay, Simona would eventually venture on and successfully make her oval debut by putting on a respectable qualifying effort. After a 4.5 hour rain delay earlier in the day, track conditions were dry enough in the afternoon to allow for a practice session for Simona and the other 26 drivers.

As she did during her oval test at the same track days ago, Simona quickly got acclimated to the track and began to turn in competitive lap times, while also working with her team to maximize the handling and speed of her car.

Qualifying soon followed and Simona confidently climbed into her No. 78 Stargate Resistance car, prepared to complete her first oval qualifying session. She would be the fourth qualifier of the day, and with a combined 168 laps under her belt, she drove 4 solid qualifying laps. The laps resulted in a combined time of 01:44.5289 with an average speed of 209.397 mph. After all 27 drivers had completed their attempts; Simona emerged 18th on the time sheets for her first oval qualifying effort.

The Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway will be aired on Saturday, May 1st on ABC at 1:30 pm EST.

Simona De Silvestro, Driver No. 78 - “Qualifying for my first oval is done! It was interesting but overall I think we did well. I was flat out throughout the 4 laps so I’m happy about that. This morning’s practice session was good and it gave me my first taste of running on an oval in traffic and it was pretty eventful but I got more and more comfortable, even though this is very different than what I am used to. So for tomorrow it's all about learning and hopefully moving towards the front.”

Keith Wiggins, HVM Racing Team Principal - “As always this year we came here to be conservative with Simona and straight away we saw potential and progressed quickly looking for more. We can be quicker than we qualified so we are expecting to improve rapidly."

Imran Safiulla, Team Stargate Worlds Principal - “We are fairly satisfied with our effort today. Simona got comfortable soon enough and progressed well through the day. We hope to continue learning and have a reasonable race tomorrow."