April 19, 2008
CORSA MOTORSPORTS SURVIVES LONG BEACH FOR FOURTH
Strategy and Consistency Help No. 48 Ferrari Earn another Strong Finish

LONG BEACH, Calif. (April 19, 2008) – Despite its share of bumps and bruises at the always-tough street circuit at the Long Beach Grand Prix, the No. 48 Alabama Motorsports Park/Corsa Motorsports Ferrari battled its way to a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s American Le Mans Series GT2 action with first-time participants Johnny Mowlem and Gunnar Jeannette at the wheel. 

“Today’s finish was much more competitive than the fourth-place we earned at St. Petersburg,” said Johnny Mowlem, who started seventh on the grid.  “The result today was earned; we weren’t so much the benefactors of others’ misfortunes.  We were really close to the pace of the fastest Ferraris who are on development Michelins.  At the last race our best race lap was one and a half seconds behind the leading Ferrari - in Long Beach we managed to halve that. Given the fact that we are arguably up against the strongest and fastest GT2 teams in the world, which is very positive; it’s a solid indicator that we can compete with the best teams in our class.  We were able to optimize the whole product this weekend: the car, the tire and the team.  It was a solid effort by everyone with Corsa Motorsports.” 

Just a few minutes into the race, Mowlem made square contact with the No. 61 (GT2) while battling for position, causing damage to the nose of his Ferrari.  He worried about the potential of a left-front puncture, but after riding easy for a few laps, it was apparent there was no significant damage.   

Team owner and Principal Steve Pruitt credits strategy and a solid team effort for his group’s wonderful performance.  A full-course caution 59 minutes into the race enabled the team to make its driver change under yellow-flag conditions and strategist Rob Taylor made the call to take gas only on its stop - despite not having tested the Dunlops on a double-stint. 

“The fact that we rolled the dice and it didn’t come up snake eyes was a true blessing,” said Pruitt, who is also an original, 34-year stakeholder in the Long Beach Grand Prix.  “We can see where the Michelin-shod teams are and we’ve were consistently only three-fourths of a second off of the lap times of the top Ferrari.  I can’t emphasize enough how great this is considering we haven’t had any practice time away from race weekends on the Dunlops.”

With 11 minutes remaining, Jeannette made contact with the wall near the fountain turn while riding in fourth place. 

“I had a run on the Aston going into the fountain turn and I thought he would lift and let me through,” he explained.  “About the time I realized it wasn’t going to let me pass, I grazed the outside wall and clipped the Aston as well.  I had to take care of the car in order to make it to the finish, but we did and saved a well-deserved fourth-place finish.  Back-to-back fourth-place finishes for this team is amazing; it is really encouraging for our group as we head into our first test on these tires and onto Round 4 at Miller Motorsports Park back home in Salt Lake City.”

Corsa Motorsports was again the second-best finishing Ferrari behind class winner Tafel Motorsports and was the highest finishing Dunlop-shod entry.  Flying Lizard Motorsports finished second and third. 

Corsa Motorsports
Founded in 2005, Corsa Motorsports is the only professional motorsports team based in Utah. The team operates from a 9,000 square-foot race services and technical facility.  Corsa Motorsports owns two Ferrari 430 LMGT cars and will field an entry in the GT2 class of the American Le Mans Series in 2008, with intentions to field a second entry the latter half of the year. Another Corsa Motorsports initiative is to provide technical race car tuning and performance services for custom race cars beginning in the summer of 2008.  The team is owned and operated by Utah commercial real estate developer Steve Pruitt.