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Tooele, Utah – Nicky Pastorelli brought the
T-Mobile® VICI Racing™ Porsche 911 GT3 RSR over the
finish line at the end of 2 hours and 45 minutes of
hard racing in the Utah Grand Prix in fifth place
after a strong race in hot, dry conditions and with
the #18 car having emerged almost unscathed from a
high speed mid race off-track incident. Team mate
Johannes Stuck, who was in the cockpit at the time,
had done well to control the incident, and with a
rapid adjustment of strategy the team was able to
record a second top-5 finish in its second race of
the year.
VICI Racing™ is a long-established German/US racing
team which has set out this week on its second year
in the prestigious sports car racing series.
T-Mobile USA is a leading innovator and provider of
mobile communications. At the end of 2008, T-Mobile
USA served more than 32.8 million customers.
T-Mobile USA is the U.S. operation of Deutsche
Telekom AG’s Mobile Communications Business, and a
wholly-owned subsidiary of T-Mobile International,
one of the world’s leading companies in mobile
communications. T-Mobile is a federally registered
trademark of Deutsche Telekom AG. Michelin is a
technical partner of the team.
Nicky, who set the #18 car’s grid time (1:48.599;
101.040 mph) yesterday during the 20-minute
qualifying session, started the car in the race this
afternoon. As the day wound up to the scheduled
mid-afternoon start time, the temperatures were
quickly rising into the high-80s, leaving the
3.06-mile, 14-turn Miller Motorsports Park, along
with the teams in the paddock and the fans out on
the circuit, all baking in the dry heat. This new
purpose-built track, located in Tooele, which is
just a 30 minute drive from downtown Salt Lake City,
is at an altitude of 4,320 feet above sea level,
putting it 3,000 feet above the next highest circuit
on the ALMS calendar, Lime Rock – and following on
from our last race at Long Beach, which is bang on
sea level, a month ago – the altitude provided for a
completely different challenge for our engineers.
Once the pre-race festivities were completed and the
throng of fans had cleared away from the grid it was
time for the traditional command to ‘start your
engines’ and suddenly the whole 23-car field was
screaming down to the first bend. Nicky’s first task
was to steer the #18 car safely through the opening
corners, particularly as the #62 Risi Competizione
Ferrari F430 GT was quickly enveloped in a cloud of
dust as it went off the track, a fate that also
befell the #92 Rahal Letterman BMW M3 E92 which
headed straight to the pits sporting damage down the
car’s right hand side. The unfolding story of the
opening stint for Nicky, the former F1 Official Test
Driver for Midland and Jordan and 2004 F3000
Champion became one of harrying the #21 Panoz
Esperante GTLM for fourth position, the Panoz using
its superior straight line speed advantage to keep
the 26-year-old Dutchman at bay.
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