NA-F2000: Chris Guerrieri Road Atlanta preview

Guerrieri is on his way to Road Atlanta

Pickering, ON - April 15 will mark the official start of the 2005 racing season for Pickering's Chris Guerrieri and Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia will be the setting. To prepare for the highly competitive Formula Ford Zetec Cooper Tire Championship racing series, Guerrieri has been testing with his new team, Aiken Motorsports, for the past several months at a tracks in Kershaw, South Carolina and Roebling Road, Savannah, Georgia. This series of tests in the Van Dieman open wheel racer have proven to be very valuable to Guerrieri and his new teammate, Jay Howard of Essex, England. Both have posted some of the quickest times of all the drivers in the series testing there. Guerrieri is now looking forward to translating this preparation into victory at Road Atlanta in his Van Dieman chassis that was recently shipped by plane to arrive for the beginning of the race season.

Guerrieri will start on Thursday morning in Braselton by setting up his Van Dieman racer for the track conditions. A series of test will be done to engineer the car to its optimum performance level and prepare it for the rounds of qualifying to take place on Friday. Aiken Motorsport has invested heavily in Guerrieri by supplying him with the new car as well as one of the top racing engineers in the business. John Hayes formally with the Indy Racing League brings a wealth of knowledge to the team. His 26 years in the racing business has seen his talents in FF1600, USF2000, Atlantics, Indylights and Indycar. Hayes Formula Ford Zetec experience from 1997 - 1999 brought his drivers three consecutive championship titles.

Two races are scheduled for the Zetec series and results will be posted on the series website shortly after the races conclusion. Following the results is as simple as logging onto www.cooperseries.com or www.chrisguerrieri.com. Highlights of the race and video interviews with the drivers and teams will be uploaded to the Cooper series site on the day of the event.

Arriving at this point in his racing career has been a tough road. Coming off his 2003 Canadian championship win in the Formula Ford 1600 series funding restrictions in 2004 saw Guerrieri limited to only the second half of the 2004 Formula Ford Zetec season. All but a few of these races had Guerrieri finish in the top ten.

This year Guerrieri plans to focus all his energies on winning the Zetec Cooper series championship. As he says, " my goal has always been to compete at the top levels of racing. The attention of many of the top teams in North America and Europe will be on the Zetec series to find the next generation of Championship Racing and Formula 1 drivers." The Zetec Cooper series has produced several of the great drivers in motor sport including Paul Tracy, Greg Moore, Dan Weldon, Alex Barron, Sam Hornish Jr. and Buddy Rice.

Guerrieri is the lone Canadian racing in the series this year and plans to do his community and country proud.

-cg-