Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Rahal Letterman Racing Team matches season high with sixth-place Utah run

Press Release

Salt Lake City – Heading into the LeMans-inspired six-week break in the American LeMans Series schedule, the Rahal Letterman Racing team headed to Saturday night’s Utah Grand Prix looking to build some needed momentum heading into the June sabbatical.

The RLR #18 Bell Micro Porsche 911GT3 RSR visited the monolithic Miller Motorsports Park circuit for the first time ever and matched a season-high with a sixth-place finish in the GT2 class.

Tom Milner started the race in fourth place, the season's best start, and quickly moved into third ahead of the Ferrari leader Risi Competizione’s #62 entry.

“The first part of the race I was able to run with the leaders, which was encouraging for the whole team,” Milner said. “The car was very well balanced and I was able to run hard.”

Milner held third for four laps before Jamie Melo and Jorg Bergmeister fought their way by, dropping the #18 machine back to fifth at the first round of pit stops. Ralf Kelleners took the helm during the stop and thundered through the field, taking advantage of Melo’s problems on Lap 35 to move back into third place, ahead of the Bergmeister Porsche now in the hands of Johannes van Overbeek.

“The race went pretty well and the car was really good,” Kelleners said. “The pace was really there today for us, but things didn’t work out. Everybody was right there in sight at the end, it was pretty close between a few cars.”

Kelleners ended his stint in fourth place, having surrendered after a hard-fought battle with Rui Aguas. Milner climbed back in the seat with 40 minutes to go and rejoined the fray in sixth, with Aguas less than five seconds ahead. Milner whittled the Ferrari’s lead to less than one second with 10 minutes left on the race clock, and was three-tenths of a second behind on the last lap, finishing sixth.

“I really thought I had the pass (of Aguas) made at the end but he held his position using everything he had and that’s the way it goes,” Milner reported. “The finishing position of this car tonight doesn’t really show how fast the car was.”

Rahal Letterman Race Notes

Saturday’s visit to Miller Motorsports Park was the first for RLR’s ALMS program. • The weekend featured season-high results in overall qualifying (16th) and overall results (16th). • The sixth-place GT2 class finish matched a season-high set in the Sebring season opener. • Milner’s fastest race lap of 96.91 mph was third-fastest among GT2 finishers. • St Petersburg marked the first time that both the RLR IndyCar Series program and the RLR ALMS Porsche GT2 program ran on the same weekend. • The two will run together at Mid-Ohio and Detroit’s Belle Isle.