Iowa Challenge Favors Lighter Cars

The first KONI Challenge Series race at Iowa Speedway will open an 11-race schedule of racing for the new facility east of the Iowa capitol city of Des Moines. The 400 km race will be the first-ever event to be contested on the 1.3-mile road course. The course uses a substantial portion of the banked, 7/8-mile tri-oval before ducking into the speedway's infield.

Last year's series results clearly showed that the powerful, but heavy, FR500C Mustangs do better on longer courses where their power can be put to advantage. Early results from testing at Iowa on Friday support the trend's continuation.

The fastest lap on Friday went to Andy Lally, who posted a 50.176 seconds (93.272 mph) result in the No. 41 Carlsen Porsche/Mitchell Global Porsche 997. "The track is a tight and twisty road course that's going to make for some exciting racing come tomorrow," Lally said.

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Second-quickest on the day was Jeff Segal in the No. 09 Fresh From Florida/Automatic Racing BMW M3 with a lap at 50.206 seconds (93.216 mph). BMW and Porsche entrants filled out the rest of the top five result.

Still, After scoring the pole position and leading the most laps in the KONI Challenge 400k at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend, Valerie Limoges is looking to take the momentum from her breakthrough performance in the USG Sheetrock/Ramset Tools Ford Mustang FR500C to Iowa this weekend.

"I am really excited about this weekend," said Limoges, who made KONI history as the first female to win a pole position. "The track is going to be new for everyone and I got a lot of experience learning new tracks all last season, so hopefully I can put that to use."



Atlanta-based Hyper Sport will be another team that will draw plenty of attention. The team's No. 55 Supercuts Ford Mustang GT co-driven by Joe Foster and Scott Maxwell has been quick throughout the season, and Foster and Maxwell finished second in the Daytona season-opener and were 10th last weekend in South Florida.

The team has entered two cars for this weekend, with Romeo Kapudija expected to share the No. 54 Supercuts Mustang GT with Patrick Dempsey, star of the ABC hit television series Grey's Anatomy. Dempsey earned his best KONI Challenge Series result last weekend with a sixth-place run alongside co-driver Charles Espenlaub in the No. 156 Supercuts Mustang.

Competing teams in both this weekend's races at Iowa Speedway, will display the Virginia Tech logo in remembrance of the lives lost this past Monday. This weekend at Iowa, teams in both the Grand-Am KONI Challenge Grand Sport (GS) and Street Tuner (ST) races will display the VT logo against a black background on each side of their race cars. The decal is the same tribute logo that competing teams in NASCAR's national series will display for the next three weeks.

The GS race will take the green flag at 3:30 p.m. CT on Saturday for a 400-kilometer (249.6 miles, 192 laps) race around the 1.3-mile Iowa Speedway stadium road course, and the race is subject to a two-and-a-half hour time limit.

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