Burrows and Hopwood Bring Kia Home at Watkins Glen

Burrows and Hopwood Bring Kia Home at Watkins Glen

Contact: Matt Cleary, Sunday Group Management
media
(317) 908-2975-Mobile

TV Information: SPEED, June 12th, 5:00 PM ET

Watkins Glen NY (3 June, 2011)– Adam Burrows and Trevor Hopwood broke through for their debut GRAND-AM win together at Watkins Glen in 2008 and the duo had been hoping to once again celebrate a big day at the legendary finger lakes facility with a strong result in Friday’s Continental Tire 150. Despite running six laps of the race up front with the No. 12 Infinity Audio Kia Forte Koup for Kinetic Motorsports, the day didn’t end in champagne as the duo came home fifteenth at the finish on Friday night.

Burrows opened the race from behind the wheel, and with the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge staging its first combined-class race since VIR, it was a busy stretch of 3.4-mile track as the large field raced hard right out of the gate.

“It was definitely an interesting start to the race,” said Burrows, who on multiple occasions had to make lightning moves to miss multi-car accidents. “I think I spent more time just dodging people that had been hit by someone else or going sideways. It was not pretty to begin with – more of it was just trying to keep out of trouble.”

He did exactly that, and stayed out of trouble to work his way to the front, leading six laps before peeling into the pits on lap 33 to turn the car over to Hopwood during one of the race’s 5 caution periods.

“All in all, I thought the car was pretty good but still weak in a straight line compared to the turbo cars,” said Burrows. “I was around probably every different car in the field… and every car pulled us going up through the esses and down the back straightaway. That didn’t make it easy. The Kinetic guys had solid pit stop – I think it was one of our better pit stops of the year for sure.”

Hopwood returned to the fray deep in the pack as others had elected to pit earlier in the race. But looking to make the most of the fresher tires and even fresher driver, he began to pick his spots and move up the order. But there was a lot of track position to make up, so a lap 51 caution was well welcomed to bunch the field.

“The strategy was tough-everyone had pitted before we did so we had a lot of ground to make up after the driver change, I did my best to pick up as many spots as I could,” said Hopwood. “It’s tough here with not having the motor that some of the other cars do. I had to really make a lot of moves where I could. I tried to catch up to Nic to try to help him out at the end. The last yellow helped us, getting everyone back in the pack. But the second yellow didn’t because it shortened the amount of time we had to race and move up. Maybe we could have grabbed a few more spots at the end, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

Burrows echoed that sentiment as the two headed out of the track for the trip home.

“This result wasn’t what we had been hoping for, but we will take the points and look forward to Road America, although that track has a lot of long straights too…”

PR inquiries about Adam Burrows and Trevor Hopwood should be directed to Matt Cleary at Sunday Group Management; 317.908.2975 (mobile) or media@ sundaymanagement.com

For additional information:

www.trevorhopwood.com
www.adamburrowsmotorsport.com
You can also follow the teams progress at www.facebook.com/kiaracing.
www.Sundaymanagement.com

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


Based in Indianapolis, Sunday Group Management is a leading motorsports management and communications consulting firm.

Sunday Group Management works with clients in a variety of motorsports categories, including NASCAR Sprint Cup driver AJ Allmendinger, Riley Technologies, GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series organization Michael Shank Racing, Continental Tire, and several teams and drivers in Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge competition.

For additional information: www.sundaymanagement.com, https://sundaygroupblog.wordpress.com, www.facebook.com/sundaygroup, or twitter.com/Sundaygroup