July 19, 2002

Qualifying From Washington Dc Grand Prix

Johnny Qualified in fifth position for tomorrow’s Trans-Am race at Washington D.C.

This is the first road race in the nation’s capital in 80 years. The track is lined with a fresh asphalt surface making it very smooth. All the tire barriers and track markers are painted red, white, and blue.

Butch Leitzinger powered his Corvette to the pole position with a time of 1:12.021. Boris Said in his #33 Panoz is second at 1:12.45. Tony Ave in the #53 Panoz is third, Mike Lewis is fourth, followed by Johnny and Paul in fifth and sixth respectively.

This was a very full day for the Trans-Am drivers starting with the first practice, on a new track for all, beginning at 11:00AM. Qualifying followed very quickly after at 2:30PM. Most teams wanted to make some gearing changes after the first practice, however, time did not permit. The final practice was at 6:15 this evening as the upper-90F degree temperatures started to relax. Johnny noted ”We got the gears changed out and made some shock changes to the car. The changes worked well and Paul tried some things that also worked well. We have compared notes, made some more minor tweaks to both cars and we expect to be very racy tomorrow.”