TRANS AM: Huffaker/Qvale, Tommy Bahama and Neville look to Vancouver
4 September 1999
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada (September 2, 1999) -- BFGoodrich Tires Trans-Am Series points leader Chris Neville has found the going difficult on the past couple of street courses, but hopes to put all that behind him at the Molson Indy Vancouver Trans-Am race on Saturday, September 4. And the best way to do that is to put his Huffaker/Qvale Motorsports Tommy Bahama Mustang ahead of the competition. "Street races always have a lot of bumping and scraping," said Neville, who scored his first pole at the season opener at Long Beach, and his first Trans-Am win at Road Atlanta in July. "Unfortunately, we've been caught up in some of that recently, but that's really a factor of not qualifying as well as we know we can. Vancouver will be a new track for everyone, and we qualified pretty well on the new configuration at Long Beach this year. Hopefully, we can put the Tommy Bahama Mustang up front to start with, and not have to worry about what's happening behind us." "We made some big strides in our street course setup at Grand Rapids," noted Joe Huffaker, Vice President and Technical Director of Huffaker/Qvale Motorsports. "It wasn't so obvious in qualifying, because we found some things in the late practice, but I thought our race performance was pretty impressive. We had to come from the back after the first caution, and we not only made our way back to the front, but we set the fastest race lap in the process. Neville has been the series points leader since his breakthrough win at Road Atlanta earlier this year. Coincidentally, that was the first race for upscale lifestyle apparel company Tommy Bahama as team sponsor. Things clicked well enough that Huffaker/Qvale, Tommy Bahama and Neville announced at the Detroit round last month that they would continue their association through the end of next season. With four races remaining on the schedule (including this weekend's race at Vancouver, round nine) the team is still hoping for a championship this year. This weekend's race, set to take the green flag for 58 laps around the 1.72-mile, 14-turn Molson Indy Vancouver street circuit at 3:00 pm PDT on Saturday, September 4, will be carried on a one-day tape delay basis on The Nashville Network (TNN). The broadcast is due to air at 2:00 pm EDT on Sunday, September 5, with the rebroadcast slated to run on the Speedvision Network on Friday, September 10, at 8:00 pm EDT. # # #