SCC: Utah: Burrows, Hopwood preview

Burrows and Hopwood Head West to Miller Motorsports Park

Tooele, UT (8 September 2010)--Adam Burrows and Trevor Hopwood will look to close out the 2010 GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge championships season off with another strong finish as the factory Kia duo head West to Miller Motorsports Park outside of Salt Lake City.

The most recent round, staged on the challenging streets of Trois Rivieres, was a case of "what might have been" for the former champions as they ran a perfect race once again and had the No. 12 Kia Motors/Infinity Audio Kia Forte Koup in position to take the first-ever podium result for Kia and Kinetic Motorsports. Alas, an agonizing six minutes from the checkered flag some smoke from a power steering issue saw the machine called to the sidelines by GRAND-AM for an extra pit stop, thwarting any chance at champagne.

The two, who were recently called into action by Kia for a media event featuring several new Kia product offerings, have since shaken off that disappointment and are focused on closing the year out with yet another race finish as Kia prepares to lose their 'rookie stripes.'

The Miller Motorsports Park facility, situated a half-hour outside of Salt Lake City, is the result of the vision and significant commitment of the late Larry H. Miller, a successful car dealership owner. GRAND-AM has historically run the long circuit layout, which covers over four miles and features a mind-numbing number of corners. The finale weekend will see the GRAND-AM make use of the shorter 3.048-mile circuit, which has just 15 corners to navigate on every lap.

The timing of the change is not ideal, as the circuit will slant the focus more to pure horsepower and reduce the reward that the Kia braking and handling package brings to the table, as evidenced by the strong run at Trois-Rivieres.

"I can not believe that it's already the end of the season!" said Hopwood, who has returned to duty in his day job as a high school teacher as another school year kicks off. "The Kia media event was a blast-it was great to get down to the shop and see all the guys at Kinetic and we all had a ton of fun wheeling the journalists around. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new layout is like at Miller this weekend although I am not sure this is going to be the place for us to be fighting for a podium like we were in Trois Riviers. But you never know, and our main focus will be to just learn as much as we can during the weekend and close the season out with another race finish for Kia."

The Miller event marks the first time that the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Challenge season-finale event will be broadcast (SPEED, September 18/9:00 PM ET), as the traditional season-ending endurance race at VIR was moved to the spring.

"It is a shame not to have an endurance race as our season finale but it is great that the final race of the season will be on SPEED with Dorse and all the guys calling the race," said Burrows, who will keep to the racing theme as he visits the Reno Air races next weekend. "Hopefully we give them something good to talk about. To be so close to brining Kia a podium Trois Rivieres and not get to do it for them was disappointing of course, but on the other hand it was great to have that kind of competitive outing so hopefully we can close the season out with a strong run to the finish."

-source: sgm