Friday, April 07, 2006

Opening Round of the Champ Car World Series Bell Micro and PKV go racing – Sunday April 9th

Robin Osborne

Long Beach Grand Prix

Downtown city streets will be converted into a temporary race circuit (1.968 miles) for the 32nd Annual Long Beach Grand Prix taking place this weekend. Bell Micro Racing will host its third “Relationship Sales Event” at the opening round of the Champ Car World Series. The Champ Car race will take place on Sunday afternoon at 1 PM. The weekend event is jam-packed with support races including the Grand American Daytona Prototype race, a Pro/Celebrity race and a Drifting Competition on Saturday. Sunday, at the conclusion of the Champ Car race, the SPEED World Challenge GT cars will take to the track.

One hundred Bell Micro guests will be on hand to hear “Gentlemen – for the 32nd straight year! – start your engines.” The Bell hospitality suite will be located at turn 9, a turn requiring drivers to slow their cars from 175 mph to 71 mph - a turn guaranteed to provide lots of racing action. Our West Coast Sales team has developed a terrific guest list including representatives from the following companies: ARMA Design, ASG, First American Title, G-Technology, Incentra Solutions, HP, Nth Generation, Medea, Money Mailer, Nexan, Pacific Blue Micro, Partners Data, Pinnacle Group, Silicon Systems, Verari Systems, Vision Computers Inc., Wachovia Capital Finance and more. Our Supplier Partner QLogic will also join in the weekend festivities helping us cheer PKV Racing to a podium finish.

The Champ Car race will certainly be exciting with PKV Racing running not one, not two, but three cars on Sunday afternoon. This season’s regular driver lineup includes Oriol Servia behind the wheel of the #23 Ford/Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone Champ Car. Servia finished a career-best second in the Champ Car World Series last year driving for Newman/Haas Racing. Jumping into the seat of the #20 car is Katherine Legge, the 25 year old Brit who will be the development driver for the season. Jimmy Vasser, PKV Racing team co-owner, will drive the #06 racing machine at this event and other select races during the series. Commenting on the decision to campaign the #06 Champ Car at this year’s Grand Prix, Vasser said, “With an all-new driver lineup at PKV, and the fact that Oriol (Servia) does not have enough time to fully acclimate himself to the team, we felt it necessary for me to run this event and maybe some selected races in the future. This way I will be able to help Oriol with his transition to PKV Racing and help with the development of Katherine (Legge) - especially during the early stages of the season.”

The Long Beach Grand Prix will be televised live on the NBC Sports Channel at 4 PM ET. The Grand American Daytona Prototype race will be televised, tape delayed, on the SPEED Channel Saturday April 8 at 9 PM ET. Don’t miss out on the action!