Austin, Texas (19 September 2014) – Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian will start the Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas from seventh on the grid for the 2.75-hour IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Championship event held at the 3.4-mile Texas road course.

The Ohio-based squad got up to speed quickly in the No. 60 Ford Ecoboost Riley as Ozz Negri and John Pew set the second fastest time of the first practice held on Thursday. The team continued to work to improve the car through two additional practice sessions on Friday ahead of the qualifying run in which Negri wheeled the car around the 17-turn circuit and set a fast time of 2:00.042-seconds.

“To be honest, we thought we had a P3, P4 car,” said Negri following the qualifying run. “Obviously, we didn’t. Before qualifying, we were suffering with a little bit of understeer in some of the corners. We did a change but it didn’t help – it actually went the other way. But you know, we race pretty well. We’ll try some other stuff tomorrow morning and see what happens in the race.”

John Pew will open the race before handing the car over to Negri to take to the checkered flag.

“We’re a little disappointed,” offered Team Owner Mike Shank. “Compared to what we thought we had. We have a little bit of work to do tonight and we’ll just look ahead to the race and see what we can do tomorrow.”

Michael Shank Racing will have a final 20-minute session Saturday morning to dial in the No. 60 machine. The Lone Star Le Mans event will go green at 12:35 PM ET and will be televised LIVE on FOX Sports 2.

The race will also air on FOX on Sunday – check your local listings.

Live timing and scoring is available at scoring.imsa.com.