St Pete 100: Friday report

Stefan made a very promising start to his Indy Lights campaign, finishing third quickest in the first (and only) practice session on the wet street circuit at St Petersburg. Later in the day, in qualifying for the first of the weekend's two races, he was sixth in his group (with such a big field, cars are split into two groups for qualifying). He had a slight mishap at the end of the session, clipping a wall and breaking a front wishbone, but the damage wasn't serious. He starts 13th in Saturday's race.

Team press release

Stefan Wilson driving the #19 flipNbags.com/Charter Indy Lights car for FIRST Motorsports completed the first practice session of the day in third place, after running in 2nd position for the majority of the session. A small weather front came through just before the start of the session which demanded a quick setup change by the crew for the wet conditions.

"As I said before, the crew is tremendous and placed a proper setup on the car for the wet session," stated Jon Lewis, owner of FIRST Motorsports. "Brendon (Cleave) our engineer is right on top of things and has a really good grasp of what needs to be done."

Lewis continued, "Stefan was impressive again. I don't know if it has anything to do with all the rain they have in England or what, but he was quick right from the start. Very consistent and gives tremendous feedback as to the handling of the car."

"I'm very pleased about practice 1," commented Stefan. "It was the first time I've driven the car in the wet and the car handled really well. The team has given me a really great car and I got really good grip from the Firestone Firehawks. I was able to push the car confidently and was able to get down to a quick pace early on. We need to make some final adjustments to get to the last bit of time out of the car, but it looks as though qualifying will be in the dry, so we'll see what happens then."