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Mike Forest Captures First Podium of the Season

Apr 11, 2011

Birmingham, Alabama - April 10th, 2011  – Mike Forest scored his first podium of the season this weekend finishing third at the Porsche 250, round 3 of the 2011 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series championship.  It was a strong effort for the Canadian driver and the Starworks Motorsport team who had shown strong potential early in the season by leading at the Grand Prix of Miami but had not been able to capitalize on their speed.

After a difficult weekend plagued by various problems and limited track time, Forest qualified in the ninth position and after taking the green flag at the picturesque 2.3 mile, 17-turn Alabama road course was forced to the back at the start after being punted off the track at Turn-2.  As he settled down into a race pace Forest slowly started gaining back positions and focused on keeping in touch with the leaders for the rest of his stint.  During a caution period on Lap 14 the team decided to leave the #8 Miracle Grout Shield / Dynacor Media / Ford Riley Daytona Prototype out as the leaders pitted, forcing the Edmonton native to have a grueling fight during the restart and defend his position without the advantage of having fresh tires as most of the cars around him.  After completing 24 laps he pitted during a caution and handed the car to teammate Ryan Dalziel while running in the sixth position.  Dalziel completed the rest of the 2h45min race and through a quick rhythm, on track passes and a clever strategy by the Starworks Motorsport team managed to climb to the third position and capture the team’s first podium finish of the year.


Forest now heads to Virginia International Raceway for the Bosch Engineering 250 on May 13 - 14 where he will look to improve on his sixth place finish from 2010.
Mike Forest
#8 Miracle Grout Shield / Dynacor Media / Ford Riley Daytona Prototype
"It was a great result in the end, we struggled with the car and we improved it over the weekend but we were still pretty far off and it was quite a handful.  A lot of other people slowed up over the run more than we did but at the same time we didn't have the outright speed so it was good that we managed to save four sets of tires.  I dropped to last at the start, there was a lot of banging and i just wanted to protect the car so i backed off and figured i would just pick them one at a time and then managed to move back through the field.  It was a good run, I love this track and its always fun to drive around here.  It's odd to be up here when everything in Homestead went right setup wise but we didn't come off with the result and then here nothing went right and we came out with a podium, but that's racing and we'll take it.

I'm very optimistic about the rest of the season, we showed lots of speed in the first two races but we didn't get the luck or the results for various reasons, but now we are up here and i think we are expecting to be up here constantly.  We know now each other pretty well now, we are working well together and I think we are going to be very strong for the rest of the year.

Schedule/TV Times

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