Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian Set for Canadian Tire Motorsport Park Debut

MSR_Racing_logo

Bowmanville, Ontario (12 July 2014) – Michael Shank Racing will start the Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance from the fourth row after Ozz Negri put down a lap of 1:11.339–seconds in the No. 60 Ford Ecoboost powered Riley. The 2.75-hour Canadian race marks Round 7 of the IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Championship and John Pew will open the event before turning the car over to Negri who will anchor it to the finish.

The Shank squad targets a positive outing at the fast 2.459-mile road course as the group aims to take the team’s first podium result of the year.

Michael Shank Racing worked to fine tune the No. 60 Ford EcoBoost/Riley Daytona Prototype through three traffic-filled practice sessions on Friday and Saturday as three TUDOR Championship classes ran together on track. Saturday evening’s 15-minute qualifying run provided the first opportunity of the weekend for clear running and Negri made the most of the quick session to put the car eighth on the 40 car combined class grid.

“We’ve changed the car a lot from yesterday to today,” said Negri. “This morning (in practice) the car was good. We just want more. We did more to the car and went too far. The track was different because of the rubber from the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race, so we ended up going too far, but now we know where ‘too far’ is. We’ll keep working on it and be ready to race tomorrow.”

“The car is handling the opposite way now to what we’ve been fighting the whole weekend,” added Team Owner Mike Shank. “We were quick in the final practice session, so to qualify eighth is just disappointing. But we’re going to put our heads down and get the best out of the car that we can tomorrow. The forecast is calling for rain which would make it a whole new ball game. We’d actually love for it to rain tomorrow!”

The Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance is set to go green at 2:05 PM ET Sunday with live coverage on FOX Sports 1. Live timing and scoring is available at scoring.imsa.com.