The final grid for round nine of the CART Toyota Atlantic Championship series at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, part of the Molson Indy Toronto, CART FedEx Championship weekend was determined this afternoon, a combination of times from two qualifying sessions.
World Speed Motorsports driver Andy Lally, who is making his Atlantic debut this weekend in the #14 World Speed Motorsports – Northwest SpeedWerx swift, turned a fast time of 2:03.948 positioning him 10th on the starting grid for tomorrow.
“I’m happy with 10th for my first Atlantic race. The car was much better for qualifying this afternoon than it was for the practice session this morning,” said a relieved Lally. “We made a drastic change in the set-up for practice this morning and it just didn’t work out, so we had to go back to our set-up we had yesterday. We were running 7th this qualifying session, which really gave me the confidence I needed to push as hard as possible.”
Teammate Akihiro Asai qualified 12th, overall, despite his limited track time yesterday. “I love high speed tracks like Road America, although keeping your speed up on the slow corners is difficult. We haven’t had much track time this weekend, so warm-up tomorrow will be crucial for me. We still need to shave off two seconds or so and then I will be more confident,” said Asai, driver of the #15 World Speed – Pro Staff/Gaikokuya swift.
Race day, Sunday, August 20, begins with a 15 – minute warm-up session at 8:00 a.m., before the start of the 17-lap Atlantic race at 10:30 a.m. The Road America race will be televised on ESPN2 and ESPN International, Saturday, August 26 at 4:00 p.m. and on RDS, Saturday August 26 at 8:30 a.m. All times are Eastern.