Mid-Ohio: Heritage Motorsports qualifying report

Lexington, OH - Friday 27 June 2003 - Tommy Riggins placed the Heritage Motorsports Mustang second in the GTS category and fifth fastest overall today at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in north-central Ohio. The qualifying lap-time which Riggins recorded is 1 minute, 25.502 seconds. First-place in GTS went to Stu Hayner in the Sky Blue Racing Mustang, who recorded a fast lap of 1 minute, 23.524 seconds, which breaks the GTS track record by a little over two-tenths of a second.

Hayner and Riggins are in good company, Hayner qualifying ahead of two of the new Daytona Prototypes and Riggins ahead of one.

The final Daytona Prototype qualified in eighth place overall, the G&W Motorsports, BMW powered Picchio. Twenty-four cars are entered for the race.

This is championship points race for the Heritage Mustang, but not so for the no. 29 Mustang of Stu Hayner. The Sky Blue racing Mustang, driven by Hayner, is crossing over from another racing series for what may be their only appearance in Grand American Road Racing in 2003. While it has been several years since Riggins has raced at this track, Mid-Ohio is a course which Stu Hayer has frequented and knows well. All of this stacks up for interesting strategies and race leverage during tomorrow night's event. Both of the Mustang teams will be fighting to win, but the Heritage team will be focusing on finishing the race more than the Sky Blue team will likely be. End-of-year points are not important to them.

The 250 mile race for top sports cars starts tomorrow evening at 6PM ET, here at the 42 year-old Mid-Ohio course. Television coverage, however, will be tape delayed to the following day (Sunday, June 29), and will begin at noon ET on SPEED Channel. There will be another short and final practice session tomorrow, Saturday at 10:20AM ET.

-hm-