Hot News & Press from Doran Racing

Gidley Qualifies 15th for Rolex 24 in Kodak Car

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Jan. 25 - It was not without drama, but Memo Gidley
qualified a solid 15th Thursday afternoon for this weekend's Rolex 24 at Daytona
International Speedway with the Lebanon, Ohio-based Feeds the Need/Doran Racing
Kodak DORAN JE4 Ford No. 77.

The driver from Novato, Calif., and Sherrills Ford, N.C. will start the race
on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and then share the car throughout the 24-hour
challenge with co-drivers Michel Jourdain Jr. of Huixguilucan, Mexico; Oriol Servia
of Pals, Catalonia, Spain and Miami; and  Fabrizio Gollin of Castelfranco
Veneto, Italy.

Gidley's official qualifying time will go down in the history books as
1:44.957 for an average speed of 122.107 miles per hour for the 3.56-mile road
course.  Even though the car had its race engine in it for qualifying instead of
its qualifying engine, that was only 1.482 seconds off the pole.

The team was forced to run its race engine during qualifying after Gidley was
involved in a crash early in the second practice session Thursday at the Bus
Stop chicane. It occurred seconds after he had jumped to the top of the lap
charts with a 1:47.468.  It was just a racing accident under heavy braking in
heavy traffic, but contact was made with one of the Ganassi cars.  In addition
to some bodywork damage the Kodak car's oil pressure dipped too low after the
accident, so team owner Kevin Doran made the decision to change engines right
before qualifying and the race engine was put into service earlier than
originally planned.

The hard-working crew put in a stellar performance, replacing and/or
repairing the damage and taking one engine out and installing another one in just one
hour and 35 minutes.

Gidley came through too.  The team had four timed laps in the rain in the
morning session to rank sixth on the results for the first practice session. It
recorded only two more timed laps in the second session at 1:30 p.m. before the
accident occurred.

At the beginning of the 15-minute qualifying session Oswaldo Negri crashed
the Michael Shank Racing No. 60 in Turn 1, which cost the entire field about
half of the allotted 15 minutes for qualifying as the track crews brought that
car in and repaired damage to a tire barrier.

Gidley only had the opportunity to make four laps in quals on a drying track,
but he wasted no time.  He was in 18th place on his second lap with a
1:56.557.  He moved into 15th with his third lap, and then he was 16th with his
fourth, final, and fastest lap.  He moved up one spot to 15th when Bill Auberlen's
Luggage Express Riley BMW failed to pass the post-qualifying technical
inspection after originally being scored sixth-fastest.

Now with the race engine in the car, Doran said the team would keep its
remaining practice laps before the race short.  There is a night practice session
later today from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tomorrow 45 minutes of practice time are
available starting at 9 a.m., and an additional 45 more minutes at 1 p.m.

More information is available at doranracing.com and grand-am.com.

Gidley's post-qualifying quote follows:

Memo Gidley:  "In the practice session before qualifying I made contact with
somebody going into the Bus Stop chicane.  There was a lot of traffic, and the
brakes hadn't come in fully yet because it was early in the session.  One of
the Ganassi cars, I don't know if it was the 01 or the 02, broke extremely
hard because of some GT cars ahead of us, and we hit him.

"We limped back to the pits.  There was very little oil pressure; that was
the biggest deal.  The nose took a good little hit and got crunched, but the
real problem was the lack of oil pressure, so we decided to change the engine. 
The Doran Racing guys worked extremely hard and got me out for qualifying. 

"None of us got many laps in during qualifying because there was an accident
early, but the Kodak car was really good in qualifying. I'm really happy with
the changes Kevin [Doran, the team owner] made from the test.  We only had
three or four timed laps, but the car was still very good for qualifying. 

"We missed the middle practice session and qualifying for us was basically a
glorified installation lap, but definitely the car is getting better all the
time. The team did a great job to get it back out for qualifying so we had a
chance to run in that session and so we didn't have to run in the qualifying
session tomorrow."