Homestead II: Doran-Lista Racing race report

Doran-Lista Finishes Seventh in Miami 250 Sunday at Homestead

HOMESTEAD, Fla., Sept. 19 - The Doran-Lista team finished a solid seventh both in the Daytona Prototype class and overall in the Miami 250 Rolex series race Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Making his first start with the Lebanon, Ohio-based team, Kelly Collins of Newport Beach, Calif. started fifth in the Doran-Lista DORAN JE4 Lexus #27 and drove for an hour and six minutes of the two-hour-and-45-minute race before lead driver Didier Theys of Scottsdale, Ariz. took over.

Collins spent most of his stint in sixth or seventh place. The car developed a push early, but the team was able to make that much better with a gurney flap change and tire air pressure adjustments under a full-course yellow when the No. 39 Crawford Pontiac spun out on lap 19.

Collins said the car was quite good after the adjustments, and he had a nice battle with the Red Bull Fabcar Porsche No. 58 for eighth place around lap 36. He was tenth when he ended his stint on lap 44 when Theys got in under a full-course yellow for the Crawford Pontiac No. 09, which had stopped in the gravel trap at turn three.

The car Collins had been battling, the Red Bull No. 58, ended up being in the worst crash of the day, as Darren Law spun in the oval's turn four on lap 47 and then was hit by Larry Huang in the No. 39 Crawford. Luckily both escaped injury.

After some pit stop shuffling under that yellow Theys was quickly back in eighth again, and he stayed there for most of the remainder of the race. He was able to move up one more spot for seventh when the Rx.com DORAN BMW No. 81 spun in turn two on the white-flag lap.

The Michael Shank Racing DORAN Lexus finished fifth. All of the DORAN JE4s in the field were in the top 10.

Doran-Lista's crew chief, Jeff Graves, worked the race despite suffering a cut left hand in a wheel-gun accident during the 20-minute practice session Sunday morning. The cut required nine stitches at the infield care center.

Additional information on the event and the team can be found at www.lista.com, www.listaintl.com, www.doranracing.com, www.grandamerican.com and www.homesteadmiamispeedway.com.

The next race is Oct. 1-3 at Virginia Int'l Raceway in Alton, Va.

Quotes follow:

Kelly Collins: "There is a clunk in the front end that wasn't there yesterday; we don't know what it is. The car developed a push early in my stint, but the crew did a gurney change and made an air pressure change and then it wasn't so bad. The car is as good as it's been this weekend; we made progress. I was relatively cool; I could have gone another half-hour or 45 minutes. The track is really slick; it is as slick as it's been. But the car was good when I turned it over to Didier. I was glad to get the call and to be in it this weekend. I had a great time, and I just wish it could have been better."

Didier Theys: "You have to have a perfect set-up to win, and basically we had the same problems here that we had at Mid-Ohio. It is disappointing for all of us, but we can't forget that we won the last race at Watkins Glen."

Kevin Doran: "More or less we just missed the set-up. The Rolex series is so tough now that if you're off just a bit you run ninth or tenth. Last year if you were off just a bit you might have still won, but now there are 12 cars that are all very competitive. The cars are very close; people sometimes don't realize how close they really are, but they're really close."