JOHN AND ROBIN PRESS CONF TRANSCRIPT

JOHN EDWARDS AND ROBIN LIDDELL, NO. 57 STEVENSON CAMARO GT.R – WINNERS

IN REGARDS TO HOW THE RACE UNFOLDED:

JOHN EDWARDS: “I had the first stint, then we pitted and took tires and a lot of people didn’t so I had to try to work my way through the field and I think that was still the right call because we saw Boris (Said) struggling on his tires at the end of his stint and lost a lot of track time. I think that was the right call, but it did put us back in traffic and I had to work hard to make that up. Made a pretty opportunistic move with some traffic when I caught Jim Norman was trying to go around the outside of (Jeff) Westphal while he was inside Jim Norman and went sailing off at the exit of turn four. That was maybe not my wisest decision, but in a two hour race we are flat out the whole time and you know that those positions are really going to matter. In the end I didn’t get by him and pitted from P2 (position 2) and the crew did an awesome stop. We were a bit concerned that driver changes it’s tough to do within the tires and the driver change went perfectly and got done before the tires. The crew did a great job on the tire change. Dropped the car and beat the No. 63 out of pit lane and that was really the key to the race. After that Robin (Liddell) with two maybe dry laps in practice went out and did a 27.7 on his first lap and then held off (Balzan ) Alessandro the whole time. Excellent job by him as well.”

ROBIN LIDDELL: “Although it was a short race and reasonable uneventful from my point of view I felt under quite a lot of pressure. Obviously, same sort of deal for everybody this weekend. It was a wet weekend up until qualifying. Although I did a couple of laps at the end of that final practice it really wasn’t completely dry. Obviously, the track has changed quite a bit. I think the testing that we did here in November helped us quite a lot. Or helped me at least just being able to go out and get into the groove straight away. I knew that was important plus with only fourteen minutes or so to go, fifteen minutes I guess maybe. I felt the pressure of being able to go out and basically stay in front of those guys, but got into a good rhythm pretty quickly. The car felt good. The track has improved quite a lot from our point of view although there is some fall off in the tire degradation it’s not as bad as it used to be so it’s definitely a step forward. That is a credit to the team here at the track for dealing with that and the Continental guys. Obviously, John (Edwards) as usual did a good job, got the car on pole, drove a really good stint and really I think it came down to the guys in the pits. We had a pretty good second pit stop and I came down pit lane and the Ferrari had dropped and started to go. He came out at quite an angle, but of course by that time I was doing 45 (mph) and I just literally thought to myself ‘if he comes out I am just going to crash into him.’ There was no way I was lifting I just had to stay on the outside lane. I wasn’t willing to lift. I figured at that point if he got ahead of us in the pit that probably was going to be the game changer. We managed to stay ahead and we were pretty strong on new tires actually compared to them. I think in the traffic as well we were able to keep them at bay quite effectively. I think in some respects they have proven themselves to be pretty strong competitors already. We have had a few tight races with them so far in the short time they have been in the series, but also in terms of our experience here at this race track and on fading tires with traffic, etc. I think that did play out a little bit to my advantage and was able to choose my moments better and keep the advantage in the traffic situation. All in all very happy, I must say I wasn’t expecting to come out of here with a win. I really thought we were going to have a tough time this weekend. Very happy for all the team and everybody else at Stevenson and Chevrolet.”