Action Express Racing will start from 3rd and 4th rows at Barber

Birmingham, Ala. (4 April 2013) – Action Express Racing will start from the third and fourth rows of the grid at Barber Motorsports Park for Saturday’s Porsche 250 event after the starting grid was set in a quick 15-minute qualifying session on Friday.

#5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP: Christian Fittipaldi, Brian Frisselle

Photo by: Mike Geng

Each Action Express Racing driver has years of experience at the challenging 2.3-mile Alabama road course and the group will look to use that experience to its advantage as the team targets a strong run on Saturday.

Burt Frisselle will start the No. 5 Corvette from fifth on the grid after setting a fast time of 1:19.858-seconds and his brother Brian Frisselle will start right behind him in the seventh position after posting a time of 1:20.147-seconds.

“I think we could have maybe been a spot, maybe two, better, but the car is good,” said Burt Frisselle after some traffic kept him from delivering fully on what the car was capable of. “It’s just a little disappointing because you want to get out for a fast lap early because you’re not sure how long the tires are going to take to come in, but at the same time then you put yourself at risk, and the cars are so close together that if anyone slows down, it screws up your lap. And at this place it’s not easy to get out of someone’s way.”

“I just struggled a little bit with power down grip and then mid-way through the session, I had a lockup going into the hairpin,” added Brian Frisselle. “Then I was just battling that lockup, I wasn’t able to charge the braking zones as hard because it keeps finding that same spot. So that was unfortunate, but we’ll race hard tomorrow and I’m confident in the car and that we’ll be right up there.”

Cold and wet weather enveloped the circuit for Thursday’s practice sessions but both Action Express Racing cars spent plenty of time on track as the group prepared for Saturday’s race. The 2-hour sprint event is the shortest race that GRAND-AM has seen this season which could see some different strategies play out among the Rolex Series teams.

“We had a minimal amount of practice because of the rain, but we are pleased, we had a smooth run,” offered team manager Gary Nelson. “We think our cars have more speed than we showed in qualifying. We are happy and we think we’re race ready. We had a lot of conversations about what approach to take to a two-hour event. You could fill up when you’re out of gas but you still need a little more to get to the finish and I think everybody is in that same boat. So we’ll see some strategy differences based on yellow flags. We’re going to go into it with our plan and be ready to change to another plan based on how the yellows fall.”

The green flag will wave for the Porsche 250 at 12:45 PM local time.

Action Express Racing