Portland

PORTLAND, OR July 21, 2006 – In the kind of weather where a heat sink becomes a hot tub, Dyson Racing qualified one, two for tomorrow’s Grand Prix of Portland. Butch Leitzinger took the pole in the #16 car followed by Guy Smith in the #20. This is the fifth Dyson Racing pole for Leitzinger and the sixth front row for the blue and white team in the American Le Mans Series. It is the second pole for this year’s new V8 AER-powered Lola, following its inaugural pole at Houston in May.

Commented Leitzinger, “For the past two years, Andy Wallace has pasted me here in qualifying to the point where I would run around and run around and could not beat his time. And it started to drive me a little bit crazy. Guy Smith was doing the same thing today, so I finally had enough and went back out and was finally able to restore some dignity to the #16 car. The Dyson team has a very good understanding of this track. And most of that comes down to Peter Weston, our race engineer. This is an incredibly difficult track to set up for. Mainly because of the long turns at the west end of the course. You are in the turns so long that if you have any kind of fault with the car, whether the car is understeering or oversteering, it just goes on forever and you just loose tons of time. So the set up here becomes incredibly important.”

The # 20 Thetford/Norcold entry of Chris Dyson and Guy Smith came off the truck quick and showed their form straight away in practice and qualifying. “Qualifying is important here at Portland,” said Smith. “For us to make it an all Dyson front row builds on the momentum from last weekend’s competitive results at Salt Lake City. It was 105 today with a track temperature of 136. The team has given us a good car under very tough conditions. This is a great way to start the second half of the season.”

Tomorrow’s race will be broadcast on CBS on Sunday, July 23: 3:00 – 5:00 PM EST.