Flying Lizard Ready for ALMS Round Four at Miller Motorsports Park

May 7, 2009 -- Sonoma, Calif. -- Up next for the Lizards is the Utah Grand Prix, which gets the green flag at 2:15 MT on Sunday May 17 at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City, Utah. Following two street courses in a row, the Utah Grand Prix is a welcome return to a conventional road course for the team: a 2 hour and 45 minute race on a 3.048 mile, 15-turn circuit.

Heading into the fourth of ten ALMS races this season, Flying Lizard, fielding two Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs, is currently leading in the GT2 team championship. The driver lineup for the Utah Grand Prix will be Joerg Bergmeister and Patrick Long in the Flying Lizard No. 45 Porsche and Seth Neiman and Johannes van Overbeek in the No. 44 Porsche. Following two wins in a row at St. Petersburg and Long Beach, Bergmeister and Long are currently leading in the GT2 drivers' championship. Neiman is currently in fourth in the drivers points chase.

Bergmeister is looking forward to being back on a road course, "I really like racing at Miller: it's fast, a real road course, and pretty smooth. Lots of fast corners, which are fun. The Lizards had a very successful race here last year -- the pole, a win for the No. 45 and a double podium -- hopefully we can repeat that success again this year."

van Overbeek joins Neiman in the No. 44 for his second race of the season. He added, "It will be great to be back on track again, it's been a while since Sebring in March. The team had a good test here at Miller in late April and I think we've really learned a lot since Sebring about what the 2009 Porsches need from us in terms of setup."

Flying Lizard chief engineer Craig Watkins will build on information from the test for car setup at the first session on Friday. "Miller is a fast track with long turns, and a good mix of right and left hand turns. The combination of a long-distance track with long-duration turns puts unusually high loads and temperatures into the tires. The longer you are in the turn, the more heat is generated in the tire. In Turns 1, 2, 3, and 7 the car is in the turn for several seconds each. The trick is to coordinate the camber and spring rate settings very carefully to give the car the stability that it needs without being too tough on the tires, while making sure that you have a good balance between top speed and adequate downforce. The altitude complicates the process: the engine makes less power, yet you still need adequate downforce so you have to be fairly aggressive with the aero settings. It's a delicate balance."

At the Utah Grand Prix, a new class will be added to the ALMS race. Named the "challenge class", it consists of a select number of Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race cars chosen from the ALMS GT3 support series. Flying Lizard Chief strategist Thomas Blam commented, "Having another class on track will mean a bit of adjustment for the drivers. The aerodnamics on the Cup cars make them very quick on the straightaways. On a long track like Miller, the GT2 cars should be able to get by them but we should expect the Cup cars to give us a bit of a run in the straights."

Blam discussed strategy for the standard 2 hour and 45 minute race format: "This should be a two-stop race. Fuel mileage is good here because of the altitude: there's not as much air in the motors and the cars don't use as much fuel. If we had enough cautions, we could do it in one stop, but because of the structure of the track -- very open with few guard rails -- we've historically had few cautions here."

The Utah Grand Prix will be the team's last race in the U.S. before heading to France for the 24 Heures du Mans, June 13-14, at the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans. Bergmeister will join Neiman and Darren Law (who is trading off driving duties in the No. 44 Porsche for the 2009 season with van Overbeek) for the Lizard's fifth consecutive race at Le Mans. "Utah is our last chance on track before our first practice for Le Mans so it will be a good opportunity to make sure we have everything completely buttoned up for that event."

Race Details
The Utah Grand Prix gets the green flag Sunday, May 17 at 2:15 pm Mountain Time. It will be broadcast, tape-delayed, on SPEEDTV starting Sunday May 17 at 7:00 pm PT/10:00 pm ET. In Europe, MotorsTV will broadcast the race live starting Sun. May 17 at 6:00 pm UK; 7:00 pm CET. For a full schedule, see www.lizardms.com.

To visit the Flying Lizard store, click here.

About Flying Lizard Motorsports
2009 is the sixth consecutive ALMS season for the Sonoma, California-based GT2 team. Since its first year of competition in 2004, the team has finished every year in the top three in the ALMS GT2 team and drivers' championships. Notably, in 2008, the team won both the ALMS GT2 drivers' (No. 45 Porsche of Joerg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler) and team championships. In 2007, Flying Lizard was second in the ALMS GT2 team championship and No. 45 drivers Johannes van Overbeek and Joerg Bergmeister finished second in the ALMS GT2 drivers' championship.

Flying Lizard has also competed in the 24 Heures du Mans from 2005 through 2008, finishing third in 2005, fourth in 2006, and sixth in 2008.

Flying Lizard is sponsored in the American Le Mans Series by ShoreTel, a leading provider of enterprise IP telephony solutions and eSilicon, a semiconductor company, both based in Sunnyvale, California; and RedlineCoffee.com, a premium coffee company dedicated to motorsport enthusiasts, based in Boulder, Colorado. Team partners include Porsche and Michelin.

###