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Created on Monday, 22 April 2013 08:33

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• Rojas and Pruett dominate Road Atlanta for Rolex Series win.

• Stevenson Motorsports pulls a double, wins in GS and GT.

Braselton, Ga. – April 21, 2013.  Road Atlanta is a classic road course.  It’s a track that’s fun to drive but can bite you in the blink of an eye, so it takes both patience and confidence to navigate the 2.54-mile track.  Noted for a surface that can be slick under high temperatures, the track was still no match for the performance of the Continental tires.  Under slick conditions, the Continental tires once again gave the drivers the confidence they require to make it to victory lane including Daytona Prototype (DP) race winners, Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett.

“Hats off to Continental Tire,” said Pruett, driver of the No. 01 TELMEX BMW.  “This year has been a big step forward for them in durability and consistency and doing it and managing to not make the track horrible to drive on, not a lot of marbles.  So you can still race side-by-side with the GT cars which is paramount when you’re trying to cut your way through traffic.”

Throughout both the Rolex Series and Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series races, tire wear looked good and lap times stayed consistent throughout a full stint.  With only one caution early on, it was the No. 01 BMW that dominated DP competition while Ryan Dalziel, in the No. 2 Starworks Ford, charged his way to a hard fought second-place finish with co-driver Alex Popow.

“Road Atlanta is notoriously rough on tires and I came here with Petit LeMans and couldn’t double,” said Dalziel post-race.  “Today, I think we quite comfortably could have doubled the tires.  Kind of the strategy that got us to second was the last stop, we only took three tires.  Most people took four or none.  It was a gamble we took but we knew the tires could take it so good day for us.”

The Grand Touring (GT) class was a race to the wire.  Veteran driver, Robin Liddell, made a spectacular late-race pass in turns 10A and 10B to take the lead from the Ferrari in the No. 57 Stevenson Camaro.  Liddell, and co-driver John Edwards, went on to power their way to their second win in a row in the GT class.  The win marked Liddell’s 20th career victory.  Edwards win marked only the fourth time in GRAND-AM history that a driver has won in both Grand Sport (GS) and GT competition in the same day, all on Continental tires.

The Mazda’s prevailed in GX competition as the duo of Joel Miller and Andrew Carbonell went to the top of the podium in the No. 00 Visit Florida Racing/SpeedSource Mazda 6 GX.

Tight quarters led to some tight racing in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series.  In the closing laps of Saturday’s GS race, Andy Lally put heavy pressure on John Edwards but with 12 minutes remaining, a race-ending caution meant victory for Edwards, co-driver Matt Bell, and the No. 9 Stevenson Auto Group team.  The win marked the team’s first of the 2013 season while Lally and co-driver Jim Norman settled for second in the No. 38 BGB Motorsports Porsche Carrera.

“The race was amazing,” said Lally in victory lane.  “We raced so hard on such a tough track and it’s a testament to how good these Continental Tires are.  You’ve got Camaro’s, Astin Martin’s and Porsche’s all sliding around, thousands of pounds, on this rubber through these corners at over 100 mph, and these tires took it all day long.”

In Street Tuner (ST) competition, Terry Borcheller made a move late in the race to pass Connor Bloum for the lead.  While the track became slicker throughout the race, Borcheller and Mike LaMarra were able to guide the No. 23 Burton Racing BMW 128i to victory lane thanks in part to the performance of the Continental tires.

“The track conditions changed a lot because of the temperature change and the sun being on the track so we were slipping a little bit more than I would have liked but it looked like everybody was,” said Borcheller.  “Actually some of the areas where the cars were really struggling were some of the important corners like coming into turn 7 and we were actually pretty strong there.  Overall the tires did a good job like they always do.”

GRAND-AM returns to the track in June when the Rolex Series visits Belle Isle Park in Detroit, MI on June 1.

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