Rob Finlay  1.43.796 P 12th

Rob Finlay qualified in 12th position for the Bosch Engineering 250 at Virginia International Raceway. In an exciting session, Rob was timed at 1.43.796 on his very last lap of the qualifying session. On his second lap of the session, Rob arrived at the end of the back stretch and had a bit of a “tank slapper” before departing the track. Earlier in the afternoon, Rob had dominated the Trueman/Akin practice session, leaving Rob in a bullish mood as qualifying approached, and may have inspired some of the extreme excitement that Rob generated amongst the race fans in the fifteen minute qualifying session

As Rob explained “On my first flying lap, I was hauling the mail down the backstretch, when I was slightly distracted as I arrived in the braking area, to find a mother and child pushing a stroller across the track, and in my extreme efforts to avoid them, I had the “tank slapper” from hell and visited the scenery, on the other hand, I may just have been just a little bit over optimistic in my first qualifying session for almost two years, and my selection of the braking point was a little further on than the cars preferred point, and we both got into a bit of a left, right, left, right, motion before taking to the grass. As I restarted the car and got back on track, I noticed a huge section of the infield race fans cheering, and holding up scores of 9.8+, so I think it was a big hit with the spectators. Getting back to the task of qualifying, it took me a couple of laps to clean off the tires, and with the encouragement of the race fans, we put it all together for the last lap, and I ran my quickest lap of the day. We’re still finding the limits at the moment, but I think in the race, the “Gentleman Jack” Pontiac Crawford will be doing it’s best to look after myself and Andy as we aim for our first podium of the 2009 season.

This weekend is Round 2 of the 2009 season, the Bosch Engineering 250 at the 3.27-mile Virginia International Raceway, April 24-25.  The race will be 250 miles or 2-hours 45-minutes, whichever comes first.  Practice starts on Friday April 24, with the 15-minute GT qualifying session scheduled from 4 - 4:15 pm.  The race is scheduled to take the green flag at 2:30 pm Saturday, April 25 and will be broadcast live on SPEED TV.