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[Che'_Moderator]

At Speed Motorsports Returns to World Challenge with Porsche; Volvo Returns at St. Pete

Savage, MD– At Speed Motorsports’ President Bob Miller announced today that the team which created and raced the Volvo S60 Rs to ever increasing success last year will return to World Challenge racing in 2006. “Not only will we be bringing back the #24 Volvo, but we’ll also have the #23 Porsche as well”, Miller noted. The Porsche will be driven by Miller, who earned the 2001 World Challenge GT Rookie of the Year Award behind the wheel of the At Speed Motorsports/Rogaine Porsche. Piloting the Volvo will be rookie sensation Paul Gerrard, who shined brilliantly in his World Challenge debut at Denver in 2005.

“We are so excited to be back in the World Challenge again,” said Miller. “Losing our sponsorship from Volvo NA so late last year put us in a very difficult position and only gave me several months to try to pull things together for this year. I had essentially shut the program down and put the Volvos up for sale when a deal started to come together right before the holidays. It’s literally only been in the last two weeks that we became confident enough to announce our participation in the start of the season.”

The timing of the arrangement puts the team at a disadvantage to most of the other participants who have been testing since the last race of 2005. In contrast, At Speed did not even begin to prepare the Volvo for competition until mid-February, and just took delivery of its Porsche last week. “Even with the lack of time, which we also encountered when creating the Volvo Prototypes, we are confident of our abilities to be competitive”, said Miller.

Director of Motorsports and Team Manager Paul Amico is responsible for pulling this all together. “It is certainly a challenge, especially since most teams have a significant time jump on us. We’re very lucky that Xtrac was able to juggle their workload to come back as our Volvo drivetrain partner. Unfortunately, Cosworth’s commitments did not allow them the flexibility to rejoin us as our engine partner, but we were able to secure the services of Dinan Engineering to take over that program. With their extensive experience in engine development, we expect no perturbations in the engine area. Most importantly, we’ve still got the core crew that made our big run last year possible. Even so, the timeframe was still too short to have the Volvo ready for Sebring.”

Volvo Crew Chief Scott Poirier talked about the task of preparing the car for the season. “This is a very complex car. Many of the parts are custom designed and manufactured to strict tolerances. When it was announced that we would be running this season, we had not ordered spares or replaced some of the parts that were nearing their life cycle. Add to that not having implemented and tested design changes that we knew needed to be done based on last year’s experience, and making Sebring was just not in the cards. We’re pulling out all the stops to get ready for the St. Pete-Long Beach double header.”

The Porsche effort will utilize a 996 GT3 Cup during the season. “Uwe Brettel of Porsche Motorsports has been extremely supportive of our return to the Porsche racing family”, stated Miller. “I am supremely confident in him and all of the staff at PMNA and very excited to be working with them again”, noted Miller.

Despite the challenges, the team has lofty goals for the year. “We’re aiming to be extremely competitive with both cars, and to place Paul Gerrard in a position to be the 2006 Rookie of the Year.”

In order to make that possible, the team has arranged to rent a Porsche for Gerrard to drive until the Volvo is ready. “At Sebring, we’ll also be running the Solley Motorsports Porsche as well as assisting James Sofronas’ two Porsches. This means there will be five Porsches lined up in the At Speed paddock and a very exciting weekend”, noted Paul Amico.

The team would also like to extend its thanks to our friends Bob Raub of 3-R Racing, Greg Loles at Farnbacher/Loles, and Rodger Hawley of Orbit Racing for helping us to consummate our Porsche program so quickly.

It’s going to be an exciting year for At Speed Motorsports.

[the underlørd]

very very very nice.

[Gioseppe]

YES!

looks like were golden for laguna seca come october guys!

[fastboy]

looking forward to this season! Should be nice to actually get to see the Volvo race.

[gdizzle]

sweet!

[JHEIII874T5M]

Glad to hear atspeed and the S60R can participate.

[Overboost850]

I love those Rs and it would have been a shame if they never competed again so this is great news!

[lax01]

so Volvo NA picked them up again? or some other outside contributer?

[1997850T5R]

so Volvo NA picked them up again? or some other outside contributer?

Great news! I love seeing the volvo's on the track... makes my day. But i'm wondering as well is it Volvo NA or someone else who has come to the rescue?

[Volvokiller]

I'm going to guess that it's not Volvo NA that's backing this year. Either way, I wish them the best of luck for 2006. Hopefully a different set of decision makers is in place for this season.

[blkaplan]

That is awesome, hopefully the s60R can get some reliability under its belt and show its true ability

[Boosted5cyl]

this IS sweet ! Those cars are too bad @#$ to NOT race competitively.One of a kind[s]. Where's a schedule at with what circuits they'll be running on do you know ? Anything in the North East ?

[Trunks850R]

sweeeeeeeeeet. glad to see them back in the game!

[Che'_Moderator]

this IS sweet ! Those cars are too bad @#$ to NOT race competitively.One of a kind[s]. Where's a schedule at with what circuits they'll be running on do you know ? Anything in the North East ?

They as of now are runnning all venues except Sebring. So the closest to you would probably be Mid-ohio

[Boosted5cyl]

yamm, mannnnn that eats it big time... Where in Ohio is that, MID I know right ! ROAD TRIP !
" This summer I went to...... Ohio. " ..........

[Che'_Moderator]

yamm, mannnnn that eats it big time... Where in Ohio is that, MID I know right ! ROAD TRIP !
" This summer I went to...... Ohio. " ..........

Atlanta is pretty close to you

[Boosted5cyl]

yeah I bet it's pretty close drive time wise to either, uh, mapquest here I come !

[JESSEXC]

3/15/06 @ the 12 hours of Sebring

[Helmut Ranff]

Great pictures. It is great to see Bobs car and Pauls

KICK CADILLAC jerk

Right now those Corvettes look tough. What a race. Go Porsche 5

[lax01]

I'd kill for a GT3 Cup Car