Risi's conservative qualifying tire choice aimed at Road America race performance

Elkhart Lake, WI - Making its return to ALMS competition after missing the Canadian round of the series two weeks ago, the Ferrari GT championship-winning Risi Competizione team faced today’s qualifying session with a definitive plan and with tomorrow’s race firmly in mind.

#62 Risi Competizione Ferrari F458 Italia: Olivier Beretta, Matteo Malucelli

Photo by: James M. Holland

In temperatures which were significantly cooler than yesterday’s two practice sessions – track temperatures had dropped by 20 degrees – the Houston-based squad used a tire choice suited to tomorrow’s predicted race temperatures.

As a result it proved more difficult to get heat into the Ferrari’s Michelin rubber and Matteo Malucelli’s best lap of 2:04.910 was enough to place him only in 10th position on the GT grid. As ever, the GT category provided fans with another super-tight session and there was a scant 0.7 seconds separating the 2nd to 10th placed cars. Pole position was taken by Jonathan Bomarito’s SRT Motorsports Viper with a time of 2:03.410 which was a further 0.7 seconds ahead of the second quickest car in the field.

Italian driver Malucelli, making his debut at Road America, said afterwards: “We had a low downforce car for the tire choice we made and this morning was really much cooler than yesterday; we couldn’t warm up the tires like yesterday but we were looking towards a longer first stint in the race. I have no complaints about the car, it’s good, but we didn’t have the grip we needed today. Tomorrow should be sunny and we will see in the warm up in the morning, but I hope we will have a better race for sure.”

The Orion Energy 245 at Road America will take place on Sunday, August 11 beginning at 2:00 pm and ABC will broadcast the race live from 3:00 pm ET. For countries outside the USA there is live-steaming on www.americanlemans.com and the race will be shown live on Motors TV.