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Grand Am DP - Fogarty Puts GAINSCO On Front Row At Laguna


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MONTEREY, Sep. 9, 2012: GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing will start its 99th career race from the outside front row in the No. 99 GAINSCO Auto Insurance Corvette Daytona Prototype after Jon Fogarty qualified second Saturday for tomorrow’s Continental Tire Sports Car Festival GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

The Continental Tire Sports Car Festival’s featured 2-3/4-hour sprint is Round 12 of 13 races on the 2012 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series schedule and can be seen live on SPEED on Sunday, September 9, at 3 p.m. EDT/12 p.m. PDT.

Fogarty battled for the pole throughout the 15-minute qualifying session and ultimately clocked in just a fraction of a second behind the similar No. 90 Corvette Daytona Prototype of Richard Westbrook. Fogarty’s top lap of 1:21.213 (99.206 mph) was good enough to lock down the outside pole-starting slot next to Westbrook, who clocked in at 1:21.042 (99.415 mph).

“I think I got the most out of it,” Fogarty said. “It was a good lap but the car ultimately just didn’t quite have the pace. It was not an easy car to drive. Any time I tried to take any more out it anywhere, the car would just give up on me, and I would end up losing time. I feel like we still have a little bit of work to do if we want to match the pace of the 90 car, I think it is a little bit of a similar scenario as we saw at Barber earlier this year, these guys seem to have the pace. So, we are just going to work on a good race car.”

Fogarty co-drives the No. 99 GAINSCO “Red Dragon” with Alex Gurney and the duo joins GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing in hoping to celebrate their 99th GRAND-AM Rolex Series race with the team’s first victory of 2012 tomorrow.

“I feel pretty good,” Gurney said. “Jon did a good job in qualifying, we were off just a tick, and we still have the warm-up to tune the car a little bit more and try and think about a long run. We are optimistic; we definitely want to put a win on the board before the end of the year.”

GAINSCO, Gurney and Fogarty are the two-time defending Laguna Seca race winners and the team began its GRAND-AM Rolex Series career at the scenic Monterey circuit in 2005. Gurney and Fogarty, both native Californians, consider Laguna Seca their home track and earned their first podium finish as a duo here in just their second race together in 2006. This weekend’s race is also being run on September 9, the ninth day of the ninth month – perhaps a lucky “99” – of 2012.

Gurney is the only driver who has competed with GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing at every race since the team’s debut.

“It has been a long time with the team now and we are all one big happy family,” Gurney said. “We hate it that we haven’t been able to win this year but we are just in a really good position. We just want to stay on top of everything and try and make it happen.”

GAINSCO Gurney and Fogarty won last year’s Continental Tire Festival from an outside front row-starting berth and the previous race held at the track in 2009 from the pole. GRAND-AM Road Racing did not appear at Laguna Seca in 2010.

GAINSCO’s best results of the year have been a trio of second-place finishes, including the most recent Rolex Series race last month in Montreal. The season’s other runner-up showings came at Barber Motorsports Park in March and in June at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. Additional top five finishes included fourth at Belle Isle in Detroit in June and fifth on the NASCAR course at The Glen one week before Montreal.

 
 
tach-xref-tags #8217;s first victory of 2012 tomorrow.