CDOC World Team Driver Report - Grand-Am Laguna Seca

May 17, 2008 — Monterey, CA — 

The CDOC World Team Drivers had a mixed weekend in Grand-Am competition at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California Saturday. David Donohue, teamed with CDOC World Team Driver Darren Law, claimed his second pole position of the 2008 season on Friday, piloting the #58 Brumos Porsche Riley Daytona Prototype to a pole lap of 1:19.843 at the iconic California track. Law and Donohue went on to take 5th place in the RumBum.com 250 on Saturday, notching up another solid result.

 Brian Frisselle, driving the #61 Exchange Traded Gold / AIM Autosport Ford Riley, qualified the car in 5th position, and saw his strong qualifying result convert into excellent race pace as he made an early pit stop and then charged to the front to lead six laps. The podium possibility was erased, though, when an airgun jammed during a subsequent pit stop as teammate Mark Wilkins had to rejoin the pack deep in the field.

But Wilkins, who took his first Grand-Am podium back in 2004, put the race pace to good use and powered his way back up to sixth before running out of laps to move up even further. The result matches the sixth place showing from the duo in the April VIR event, and has the two looking forward to Watkins Glen.

"Two solid finishes in a row is great but everyone can see that this AIM Autosport Gold Ford-Riley is really capable of more," said Brian. "But we'll take these points and this momentum and head for the Glen. This team keeps raising the game and hopefully we can show that with some even stronger race finishes sooner rather than later!"

Burt Frisselle and Gabriel Gardel finished 19th in the DP class, after qualifying 12th. Gardel was punted off-track early in the race; the Doran Racing team made the most of a bad situation to prepare for races in the future, repairing the Dallara to rejoin the track as Burt took over the controls to try a variety of new set-ups.

The Doran Racing squad, which had started the day with an impressive effort to repair the car in time for the race start after Gardel had an off in the final warm up on race morning, had to do kick in for repair duty once again to rectify damage to the cooling system before Frisselle could return to action. But the quick garage work allowed Frisselle to strap in and treat the rest of the race as a test session with the car, which was making only its third start in Rolex Sports Car Series competition.

"It's a shame that Gabriel got knocked off the track, but looking at what happened out there, it could have been a lot worse as far as the damage, so at least we were able to get back out and get some more data with this car," said Burt. "The Doran guys did a great job to get us back out on track and just gave us a chance to test with this car a little bit because it's still so early with this machine compared to most of the cars out there."
"It has been challenging as well with the two-day schedules that a lot of these races have now, because you just don't get too much of a chance to improve the car so we thought we'd use the track time we had here, even though of course we'd rather have been racing!"

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Founded in 2003 and based in Gordonsville, Virginia, CDOC is one of the largest master warehouse distributors of racing gear in the U.S. Specializing in precision performance and safety equipment from the world's leading original equipment and aftermarket manufacturers, CDOC offers unparalleled customer service and a fully stocked inventory of diverse products for drivers, teams and enthusiasts.

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