Alton, Va. (22 August 2014) – It was another strong outing for Stevenson Motorsports on Friday at Virginia International Raceway as the team secured another double top-five starting spot on the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge grid for Saturday’s Oak Tree Grand Prix.
Unfortunately, the No. 6 Camaro Z/28.R was found to have a non-compliant engine air restrictor and will start the race from the rear of the GS class field.
Lally’s fastest flying lap in the No. 9 Camaro Z/28.R was just .011-seconds shy of Davis’ time and he will open Saturday’s 2.5-hour race from the fourth starting position. Lally shares the No. 9 Camaro Z/28.R with Matt Bell who will anchor the car to the finish.
“We’ve got a much better race car than a qualifying car,” said Lally. “I had a pretty good lap going until I caught another car and made a mistake when I did on my first lap. We finally got another clean lap three laps later but we were struggling a little bit by that point. I’m happy with how the car is in race trim and I think we can run with anybody. We’ll see if that holds true tomorrow.”
Davis set his quickest lap time of the 15-minute session on Lap 4 of his six lap run and was enough to secure fourth on the grid with a fast time of 1:59.078-seconds.
“We’re in a good spot – I realized after the test day yesterday that it was going to be very close and come down to hundredths of a second,” said Davis, who shares the No. 6 Camaro Z/28.R with Robin Liddell. “The field is very strong and the balance of performance from the series is very good. The Camaro Z/28.R is running awesome. We made good progress on it – it’s a shame that we’ll start from the rear of the field but I think we still have a good racecar so we’ll do our best to work our way back to the front tomorrow. We didn’t quite have enough for pole so congrats to Jordan (Taylor, polesitter) for putting a mega lap together. That gap is a bit baffling to me but we’ll look to see how we can make our car faster. What’s important is that we have a really good race car. The Stevenson Motorsports crew has been working as hard as they can to give us a car that’s better each session. It’s about the race. We’re obviously racing the 46 car (for the GS championship) and we’re starting ahead of them and the goal is to stay ahead and let the race come to us.”
The Stevenson Motorsports Camaro Z/28.R machines ran among the top-five throughout Friday’s two practice sessions and the team is hopeful to convert that speed into two positive performances on Saturday. Davis and Liddell currently sit second in the championship and a solid run at VIR would bring valuable championship points for the squad.
The 2.5-hour IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge event will go green Saturday at 2:05 PM ET and will be carried LIVE on www.imsa.com.
The race will be televised on Sunday, August 31 at 10:00 AM on FOX Sports 1.
