Déjà vu
for Sam Schmidt Motorsports at Indy
Cars
qualify in identical positions to St. Pete
INDIANAPOLIS,
Ind. - Sam Schmidt Motorsports racers will have to race
their way to the front of the field as the team missed a
three-peat of the front row and lined up in identical
positions for the Liberty Challenge at the road course at
Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the team's starting grid
positions at the first road course race of the season, St.
Petersburg, Fla.
Jamie Camara
again led the team's qualifying effort. He qualified fifth
for Saturday's race in his #1 CELG/Goias, Sam Schmidt
Motorsports entry, turning a lap of 1:27.3720 (107.128 miles
per hour) in front of thousands of F1 race fans. Chris Festa
will start sixth in his #19 Western Union/CareCentric, Sam
Schmidt Motorsports entry after a lap of 1:27.4560
(107.025). Gregg starts ninth in his #7 Lucas Oil Special,
Sam Schmidt Motorsports entry with a qualifying lap of
1:28.6350 (105.602).
Marco Andretti
won his second road course pole with a lap of 1:06.2360
(108.539 miles per hour).
For Gregg, it'll
be his first start outside the front row since St.
Petersburg. The Camden, Ohio, native, who is making his
ninth career start in the series'sixth race of 2005, admits
a driver can get spoiled by always starting on the front
row.
"At Texas, I
even talked about how spoiled I am with always starting on
the front row on oval tracks," smiled Gregg. "I gained a lot
of time from the first qualifying session to the second, and
I avoided the biggest challenge − running off into the
gravel. If you ran into the gravel, basically, you lost
your car for the entire practice session because they pulled
it behind the wall where your crew couldn't work on it. So,
you wanted to be aggressive today, but you wanted to keep it
out of the gravel so your session wouldn't be done early."
Camara, a
24-year-old Brazilian native living in Miami, had a lot to
smile about after qualifying. His final run was cut short by
the end of the practice session, but Camara saw enough from
his race car to know it is very capable of doing well in the
race.
"The course was
very slick when we first began practice," Camara grinned
when his early off-track excursion was mentioned. "We slid
off course and ran through the gravel, but, luckily, we
didn't get stuck or do any damage. The car is really good.
It's gonna be a really good race tomorrow because we are
starting so far back and we have a really good shot to go to
the front."
Festa, the
19-year-old driver from Atlanta who enters his second year
at Florida State University this fall, was the only Menards
Infiniti Pro Series driver to keep his car on the pavement,
going in the correct direction, all day.
"Yeah, I guess
we were the only car that didn't test the gravel traps
today," Festa said. "We really wanted to qualify better, but
we just ran out of time to make changes to the understeer
out of the car. We had an awesome setup in the test session
here earlier this year, and I'm looking forward to getting
the car closer to that setup. If we can get there, we'll be
very fast in the race."
Saturday's
25-lap race begins at 5:45 p.m. (EDT), and will be televised
on a tape-delayed basis at 5 p.m. (EDT), on June 21st
on ESPN2.
FOR FURTHER
INFORMATION: Williams Company of America, Inc. (704)
660-0796
;
