Trois Rivieres, Que (12 August  2010)—With two previous visits to the perfectly-located podium  inside turn one to their credit, Adam Burrows and Trevor Hopwood will return to Trois Rivieres this weekend for an event that both former champions are looking forward to.  With over four decades of racing history, the Grand Prix du Trois Rivieres is a true highlight on the GRAND AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge calendar.

The two racers will look to extend their run of race finishes this Saturday as they once again team in the No. 12 Kia Motors/Infinity Audio Kia Forte Koup for Kinetic Motorsports.

“It’s a huge weekend because the entire town is completely shut down for this race and the fans are really incredible,” said Hopwood, who will emerge from the woods for the race weekend, having spent much of the summer as a camp counselor in Maine. “Usually riding around on the back of a pick up truck is a pretty bad idea, but when you are doing it on the way to the podium and you get to see the crowd all fired up, it’s a lot of  fun! Hopefully we get to do that again on Saturday but the biggest thing is to go all the way to the finish. The field is really deep with talent again in ST, so it’s going to be a big fight out there but I can’t wait for it.”
 
In their first visit to the track, Burrows did the qualifying before turning the machine over to Hopwood to power to the finish for a run to third place as the two went on to take the championship.

In 2008, it was Hopwood who set the car on the grid, with Burrows taking the car to the finish for a dominating victory after he stayed clear of the field despite using very little of the car’s braking resources  clear to the checkered flag.
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Tooele, UT-- (20 July 2010) -- When the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge field takes the green flag for the final round of the 2010 championship at Miller Motorsports Park September 12, it will mark the end of an era as the series stages its final race on home soil.  Formed through an innovative partnership between Miller Motorsports Park and Ford Racing, the Mustang Challenge ran for three racing seasons and enjoyed significant sponsorship support from BFGoodrich Tires.

The Mustang Challenge, which was first announced at the SEMA show November, 2007, was the first national race series to be run by a track as Miller Motorsports Park developed and managed the program under the leadership of Series Director Lynda Randall. Sanctioned by GRAND-AM from the outset, Mustang Challenge visited classic tracks across the continent from Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to Watkins Glen to Mosport to Lime Rock Park.

With racers of almost every age, Mustang Challenge fostered the careers of several young up and coming racers as well as attracting established racing names including Jack Roush, Jr., Andy Lally, Bucky Lasek, and Vaughn Gittin, Jr.,  through three years of racing operation. The racers in the series enjoyed the coaching and advice from Ford Racing High Performance Driving School during the race weekends.

It also proved to be an ideal competitive outlet for drivers like George Winkler, Pete Crosby, and Steve Phillips, who had little racing experience before joining the series in 2008. More experienced drivers including Pratt Cole,  Dan Aweida, Tony Buffomante, and Jim Click also found the racing to be both fun and competitive as the championship grew from eight rounds in 2008 to eleven races in 2010. Running on the same tracks with the same rule structure saw several drivers take the experience they gained with them to move up the GRAND-AM ladder, with Andrew Caddell, Ted Anthony Jr., Zach Lutz, Brad Adams, Steve Phillips, and Andrew Hendricks just a few of the drivers to make that progression.
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Watkins Glen, NY, 6 August 2010-- Arriving at the 2007 Daytona 500 with less than 150 laps of stock car driving experience under his lap belts, AJ Allmendinger faced an uphill battle as he looked to translate a winning open-wheel background into success in the NASCAR Sprint Cup ranks. Deepening the disadvantage as his career progressed was the constant wave of change, as the Californian worked hard to find success while adapting to different manufacturers, teams, and crew chiefs in an entirely new discipline.

But those hard turns made for an even stronger racer, and now AJ Allmendinger will look to translate a stable home at Richard Petty Motorsports into greater glory in the future as the team announced on Friday at Watkins Glen International that Allmendinger has signed a multiyear contract to drive the No. 43 Ford Fusion in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series competition.

Allmendinger first raced with the organization in 2008 as he impressed with strong finishes in a season-ending run of five races, netting him the chance to rejoin the team as Gillett Evernham Motorsports merged with Yates Racing and the Petty organization to form Richard Petty Motorsports in 2009.

AJ launched the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season with a run to third in the Daytona 500 as he raced to keep racing, using funding from prize money to continue to keep the machine on track despite a sponsorship shortage.
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