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Gleason and Hand Finish Second
Saturday in Garden State 250
MILLVILLE, N.J., May 2 - Only a few miles from the theaters of Atlantic
City's casinos, Chris Gleason of Johnstown, Pa. and Joey Hand of Sacramento,
Calif. came in for their share of applause Saturday after they finished second
in the Garden State 250 at New Jersey Motorsports Park's Thunderbolt
Raceway.
The KONI Challenge race will be shown at noon Eastern next Saturday, May 9,
on SPEED.
Gleason and Hand's Turner Motorsport BMW M3 was only 2.505 seconds behind a
Porsche 997 co-driven by Duncan Ende of Los Angeles and Spencer Pumpelly of
Suwanee, Ga. after two and one-half hours of competition on the demanding,
2.25-mile road course.
Peter Ludwig of New Paltz, N.Y. and Billy Johnson of San Clemente, Calif.
finished a distant third. Their Porsche was more than 18 seconds behind
Gleason and Hand's No. 97, which is sponsored in part by Gleason Financial.
The race featured 10 lead changes. Hand led once for three circuits,
heading the field from laps 52 through 54. He also set the second-fastest lap of t
he race on lap 48 in 1:30.190 for an average speed of 89.810 miles per
hour. Only Pumpelly ran faster, as he set the fastest lap of the race with a
1:29.963 (90.037 mph) on lap 47 while battling Hand in the 45-car contest.
Ironically the top three in the race at that point ended up being the three
podium finishers, in that order, when the checkered waved on lap 93.
A great deal happened before and after that, however. Gleason started 18th
and passed both Scott Panzer and Charles Putman right away. He ran the
fastest lap of his 38-minute stint on lap six, which was just about a second off
the laps being run by Matthew Bell at the time. Bell had won the pole and
led the first 27 laps of the race in a sister Turner Motorsport BMW M3 that
he shares with Bill Auberlen.
Gleason moved up to 15th on lap five and 14th on lap 10. For most of his
stint he chased Mark Boden of Winnetka, Ill., who was driving another BMW M3
fielded by Fall-Line Motorsports, while keeping ahead of Putman, of Mills,
Wyo., who was in the Automatic Racing BMW M3 that was in contention for the
victory until the very end with Charles Espenlaub of Lutz, Fla. driving.
Gleason was one second behind Boden on lap 16, but he'd cut Boden's
advantage to only 0.450 of a second two laps later despite the fact there were no
cautions during his stint to tighten the field.
When one did occur on lap 24 for a disabled Mazda MX-5, Gleason pitted for
four tires, fuel and to turn the car over to Hand. The pit stop dropped the
entry back to 27th place, but Hand had it back in the top 15 by lap 28 and
in ninth by lap 33. Through some other drivers' pit stops and some passing,
he moved from seventh on lap 35 to second on lap 38 after the event's second
and final caution came out at about the one-hour mark for two cars that had
rolled to a stop. It lasted only five laps.
Hand was 1.820 seconds behind Pumpelly on lap 50, and he took the lead on
lap 52 when Pumpelly pitted. Hand pitted himself on lap 55, which dropped him
back to 12th place. Two laps later he was 11th to Auberlen's tenth.
Auberlen and Bell's car led 29 laps on Saturday to Hand and Gleason's three laps,
but the latter's BMW was quicker Saturday.
Hand climbed back into the top 10 on lap 61. With 20 minutes remaining in
the race he was eighth, but three minutes later he was fourth. With 12
minutes to go he was third to leader Charles Espenlaub and Pumpelly. With less
than 10 minutes remaining Pumpelly took the lead from Espenlaub on lap 86.
With six minutes left Pumpelly was 2.534 seconds ahead of Espenlaub, while
Hand was 2.596 seconds behind Espenlaub and 5.130 seconds behind Pumpelly.
With just three minutes remaining Espenlaub faded to third. He dropped to
sixth at the very end because he was running out of fuel, which allowed Johnson
to take the final podium position.
This event was the first of five KONI Challenge races within eight weeks.
The next race is coming up May 15-16 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in
Monterey, Calif. Another race is on the docket for May 22-25 at Connecticut's Lime
Rock Park. The circuit then moves to Watkins Glen International in Watkins
Glen, N.Y. June 4-5, followed by the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in
Lexington, Ohio June 19-21.
For the rest of the schedule and additional information, see
turnermotorsport.com, grand-am.com/koni, konisportscarchallenge.com, gleasoninc.com and
speedtv.com.
Gleason's post-race quote follows:
"All weekend I was going really well, as I was only about a second off Bill
[Auberlen] and Joey [Hand]'s times. We were all set for qualifying on
Friday, but when we pulled out of the pits it rained like cats and dogs. I wound
up qualifying 18th, which was awful. I was dejected with the whole thing.
I worked myself over pretty good.
"But we sat down and talked it over, and Joey said to just keep the car in
one piece and run my pace, and not to worry. We came in right at our fuel
window, and Joey got four tires and fuel.
"Spencer Pumpelly was the first guy to do a pit stop, and then we came in
and did the same thing. Billy [Auberlen] came in and didn't take any tires,
so he was ahead of us after the pit stop. The same thing applied for Billy
Johnson; he got out right ahead of us too.
"Joey closed in on both Billy Johnson and Billy Auberlen. Billy Auberlen
tried to pass Billy Johnson and sliced his tire while he was doing it, and
Joey slipped by on the outside and passed them both. That's how he got ahead
of him. Then Auberlen had a cut tire later too.
"Joey did a fantastic job. Spencer beat us by less than 3 seconds. It was a
wonderful race; I haven't been on the podium since 2007, so it was great.
The Turner Motorsport team did a wonderful job; they have a fabulous engine
builder. The whole team really performed great. It will be fun to watch it
all on TV, and this helps us in the point standings.
"Joey won't be able to be my co-driver at Laguna Seca, so Justin Marks is
going to drive with me for Monterey. We were teammates in '05, so it will be
nice racing with him again too."