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Just Missed on another Top 5

Apr 25, 2010
With their 6th place finish the Starworks Motorsport team came up just short of posting what would have been their third consecutive top 5 finish. The result at Virginia International Raceway did however keep Ryan Dalziel in 2nd place in the championship and bumped Mike Forest up to 8th. The finish also had Forest winning the Bob Trueman Award for the ‘top young driver' category.

The team utilized the same strategy that worked last race where they compromise their qualifying effort to save tires for the race. Forest just missed out on a top 10, qualifying 11th.

Saturday's 2 hour, 45 minute race started under threatening skies but the race was run in dry conditions from start to finish. On the start Forest was able to claim one position as he passed the #90 car. Right on the tail of the #60 car, Forest was unable to get by the Ford powered car on any of the three long straightaways at VIR. On lap 7 Forest received the break he needed when the #60 car dropped wheels off the course which allowed Forest to get by and run down the next competitor.

Forest claimed another position as he passed the #6 car en route to running down the #9 Action Express. As the two cars sliced their way through traffic they were able to have quite a close battle over 8th position.

"You had to be quite aggressive in the GT traffic. VIR has three sections of track where it is very fast [100+ mph] and single lane only, meaning if you don't get by them [GT cars] you can lose 5 or more seconds waiting behind them. Despite coming up a bit short I thought everyone on the team did a great job this weekend" Forest said.

The pit stop and driver change of the #8 Corsa Car Care/Dynacor Media car had Ryan Dalziel take over and picked up where Forest left off, in 8th and catching cars. Soon Dalziel gained 7th position as he passed the #77 car. From that point on the race settled down until a full course yellow came allowing the team to perform their final pit stop which netted them another position, moving them up to 6th.

The drama picked up in the final thirty minutes when during another full course yellow the cars in positions 3, 4, 5, 7 & 8 all make contact with each other all before the green flag waved. The Starworks machine miraculously escaped unscathed in the middle of it all. When the race went green, one of the damaged cars slide into the #8 machine forcing it off in turn 1 and dropping it down to 7th momentarily. With all of the contact came debris on the course, another full course yellow came out almost immediately. The car which overtook Dalziel was forced to pit due to the damages sustained in the pre-restart incident; bumping Dalziel back up to 6th. Despite numerous attempts to overtake the damaged #99 car in the closing stages, the #99 was able to hang on to 5th; relegating the Starworks Motorsports team to 6th.

"I'm a little disappointed; it would have been nice to keep our top 5 streak alive. We just didn't quite have enough pace today so we have some work to do at the lime rock test before returning for our late May race" Dalziel said.

Schedule/TV Times

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