After racing just a
short drive from
TRG's Petaluma headquarters last weekend at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,
the team's transporters quickly headed 3,000 miles to the East for this
weekend's Lime Rock GT Classic 250 at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Conn."We're all looking forward to it," said team owner Kevin Buckler. "We've done well there before with the Pontiacs. I'm a little worried about that, because they're a little too strong now. This is a great weekend for sports car racing, because it's the all-GT weekend. We have our KONI Challenge cars there as well. We get to take that Sunday off. We go to my friend and fellow racer Michael Schrom's house and get to hang out. It's a fun weekend. It's got that Memorial Day feel."
Scheduled for Memorial Day Monday, the Lime Rock GT Classic is the only "showcase" event for the GT class in the 2008 season.
The event will feature four TRG Porsche GT3s and an eight-driver lineup, with full-time drivers Bryce Miller and Ted Ballou in the No. 66 Marquis Jet/Mitchell Rubber/Resorts International/IPC/Total Lubricants machine and Tim George Jr. and Spencer Pumpelly in the No. 67 entry.
The full-timers will be joined by RJ Valentine, who is sharing the No. 68 CRG/Maxter/Rotax/MBA Group F1 Air machine with Bryan Sellers and three-time Rolex Series champion Andy Lally, who is returning to the TRG Grand-Am team for the first time since the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona. Lally is a full-time driver for the TRG Motorsports team in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Completing the TRG lineup is the No. 65 Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing/Total R entry for 2005 Rolex Series GT champion Craig Stanton and Salt Lake City's John Potter, who is making his 2008 debut with the TRG/Riegel Autosport team.
George and Pumpelly enter the Lime Rock GT Classic 250-the sixth round of the 13-race 2008 Rolex Series GT schedule-running second in the championship standings and just nine points behind the leaders. The duo has finished on the podium in four of the first five races, including back-to-back second place at Virginia International Raceway last month and Laguna Seca last weekend. However, the No. 67 teammates head to Lime Rock hungry for their first victory.
Miller and Ballou earned their third top 10 result of the season last weekend and are currently eighth in the Rolex Series GT team standings. The No. 66 co-drivers head to Lime Rock looking for their first victory of the season as well. Their previous best performance this season was a second-place run in the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona.
The Lime Rock GT Classic 250 is something of a "hometown" event for Valentine, who hails from Braintree, Mass. Valentine and Sellers have shared the No. 68 entry for three of the last four events. Valentine opened the year in the Rolex 24 with a fourth-place run in the No. 64 TRG/J Lowe Racing Porsche with co-drivers Jim Lowe, Jim Pace, Johannes van Overbeek and Tim Sugden, and Sellers co-drove the No. 67 machine to a third-place result alongside Pumpelly, George and Porsche factory drivers Emmanuel Collard and Romain Dumas.
Stanton made his debut in the No. 65 TRG/Riegel Autosport entry last weekend at Laguna Seca with Canadian Hima Maher and the duo finished eighth. This week, Stanton and the team welcomes Potter back for the first time since the 2007 season finale at Miller Motorsports Park. Potter made two Rolex Series GT starts with TRG last year.
"I just hope for some more points," Buckler said. "We're running in the championship with both the No. 66 and 67 cars. I want to keep those guys on the podium. The 67 been on the podium in four out of five races, and the 66 was on the podium at Daytona. I want to get the rest of the guys up there as well. All of our cars have been well prepared by our team and everybody should have a shot at a good result this weekend."
The weekend schedule at Lime Rock Park gets underway with a pair of practice sessions on Friday, May 23, while qualifying is scheduled for Saturday, May 24. After a day off due to a Connecticut state law, which prohibits racing events from being run on Sundays, the Lime Rock GT Classic 250 will take the green flag at 2:00 p.m. ET on Monday, May 26.
The race will be televised live on SPEED. Live Timing & Scoring data from every on-track session is also available on www.grand-am.com.
