(October 1, 2010) — Paul Miller Racing will start the 2010 Petit Le Mans from seventh on the GTC grid, a frustrating change after the team’s strong performance in the last five American Le Mans Series races. Bryce Miller of Summit, N.J., qualified the No. 48 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car in one minute 26.874 seconds, at an average speed of 105.256 mph on the 2.54-mile Road Atlanta road course in Braselton, Ga.
Miller earned four front-row GTC starts this season, including a record pole position at the last event, at Mosport International Raceway. He and his co-driver, Luke Hines of Essex, England, followed the record pole by leading every lap of the Mosport race, until Hines was knocked off-track in an incident that ultimately ended the race. The crew rebuilt the car during the past month and had it back on track for this week’s Petit Le Mans action.
“This is a difficult transition for our team because we came off such a good performance at Mosport,” Miller said. “But really, looking at it objectively from outside the culture of our team, I think it’s a victory that we are even here and we can compete in this 10-hour event. We have a reliable car and a well-prepared car, the paramount issues in an endurance event like this, and we have good drivers in the car. It will be important to just pace ourselves and keep it clean. If we do those things, I think we have a very good shot at a podium result, and that would be quite a comeback considering everything that the team has had to do over the last five weeks.
“It’s been difficult this week for us, considering we’re trying to chase the setup on this new car and there’s been a lot of rain that has interfered with some of our progress. That’s been a little frustrating. But we’ll just try to keep the tires underneath us, get good pitstops and driver changes, and work all the other things that add up outside of the lap times.”
Hines will drive first in Saturday’s 1000-mile / 10-hour race, followed by Miller and Pierre Ehret of Tegernsee, Germany. Their black-silver-and-red car carries the colors of team sponsors Marquis Jet, Grand Prix Racewear, IPC Information Systems and TOTAL Lubricants.
details
The 1000-mile / 10-hour Petit Le Mans is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 2, from 11:30 am to 9:30 pm EDT on the 2.54-mile, 12-turn Road Atlanta road course in Braselton, Ga. The race will be telecast live on SPEED from 11 am to 9:30 pm EDT and broadcast live on radiolemans.com and Sirius XM satellite radio. Live timing/scoring will be available at imsaracing.net.
partners
Paul Miller Racing competes with the support of four international sponsors. Marquis Jet is the recognized leader in private jet cards because it’s the only program that offers exclusive access to NetJets – the gold standard in private aviation – 25 hours at a time. Grand Prix Racewear is a respected supplier of motorsport protective clothing and driver accessories, based at Silverstone Circuit in England. The company offers worldwide delivery of 15,000 product lines. IPC Information Systems is a leading provider of mission-critical communications solutions to financial services firms. TOTAL Lubricants is the world’s fourth-largest publicly traded integrated international oil and gas company.
