Fifth Row Start For Matt Bell at Lime Rock Park

Fifth Row Start For Matt Bell at Lime Rock Park

Contact:

Matt Cleary, Media

Lakeville, Conn. (27 May 2011) – Matt Bell once again laid down some quick laps in the No. 9 Stevenson Motorsports Camaro GS.R to earn his fifth consecutive top-10 starting position of the season at Lime Rock Park. With a lap time of 58.651 seconds during the 15-minute qualifying session, Bell will start Round 5 of the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge from ninth on the grid in Saturday’s 2.5-hour Memorial Day Classic.

Bell and co-driver John Edwards proved to be fast from the start of the weekend, clicking off laps to complete the first practice session fourth, and the second practice 10th.

The Stevenson Motorsport team is utilizing a new wing this weekend and despite running in the top-10 all day, the configuration did not generate as much speed as the group had originally hoped for at the 1.5-mile circuit and is looking to get even more speed out of the Camaro.

“With the new wing that we were allowed to run, we thought it might be our savior, but here at Lime Rock it might actually be hurting more than helping,” said Bell after noting that another Camaro team had elected not to run it posted a faster (by all of .003 seconds…) time. The Stevenson squad, along with Bell and Edwards will regroup to determine the best setup for tomorrow’s race.

“Now, we have the gamble–do we remove the wing and start over with the set-up? Or do we just stick with it?” offered Bell. “One thing is that the wing helped a lot over the long run – my fastest lap was later in my run and that is not how qualifying normally goes. The wing also offers the driver a lot of information and it makes it more comfortable to drive. We’ll talk with the engineers and go through all the scenarios and decide what we are going to do. I’m optimistic about the progress we’ve made so far and hopefully we can come up with something good for tomorrow.”

The ninth place start marks the 11th consecutive top-10 grid spot for the California racer as he continues to impress when the pressure is on. Bell has not started outside the top-10 since April of last year at VIR, where the team rallied to score a debut podium for the Camaro.

Bell will take the green flag for the Memorial Day Classic tomorrow at 3:30 PM (ET). Tune in to www.grand-am.com for live timing and scoring during the race

-30-

Matt Cleary
Sunday Group Management
media
http://www.sundaymanagement.com
317.908.2975 (m)


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