IRL: Cheever Pikes Peak qualifying

Fountain, CO (June 16, 2001) - Defending race champion Eddie Cheever Jr. qualified 11th for Sunday's sixth round of Indy Racing Northern Light Series competition, the Radisson Indy 200 at Pikes Peak International Raceway. Cheever, who earned the first Indy Racing victory for Infiniti Motorsports at Pikes Peak last June, posted a fast lap of 20.8666 seconds (172.525 mph) in his #51 Cheever Indy Racing Infiniti. The 1998 Indianapolis 500 Champion qualified tenth at Pikes Peak last year.

Eddie Cheever Jr. (on qualifying): "The weather conditions have changed a lot over the course of the day. This morning we did a 20.6 (seconds) relatively easily, and this afternoon we did a 20.8 in qualifying. It's tough. The air is very thin and any temperature change you have on the asphalt makes a very big difference.

I've got a bit of push in Turns 3 and 4. I'm not very happy with that but we didn't really qualify that well here last year either, and things turned out alright. We're good. The Infiniti 35A engine is strong, and I think we have a good race set-up. It's a long, hard race, and a lot of it comes down to tire management. It's going to be very hard on tires. Firestone makes great tires and we really run them hard up here in Colorado."

Associate sponsors of Cheever Indy Racing include Infiniti, Firestone, Menards, Bosch, True Grit, and Eviciti.

CIR