18 August 2001. Ryley/World Speed will start ninth for tomorrow's Road America Atlantic race

Grant Ryley and the World Speed Motorsports team will start ninth for tomorrow's CART Toyota Atlantic Championship race at Road America.  Ryley was able to improve on his time set yesterday in provisional qualifying (2:03.077, 118.404 mph) and fell four spots from fifth in today's final qualifying round.

"We had kind of a tough qualifier today," said Ryley, who had the third fastest time (2:03.318, 118.173 mph) this morning's practice session in the #14 Northwest Speedwerx/ Cupertino Electric/Velocity Ventures/Del Monaco Specialty Foods Swift.  "We tried some things and found out what worked and what didn't, so at least we have a good direction for tomorrow.  Some of the other guys made some big jumps today and we hope that we can do the same tomorrow.  The race is going to be all about the draft.  There really weren't a lot of people working together today, but that will change for the race when we all start in a pack.  It should be fun."

As a rookie to the Atlantic series, this weekend marks Ryley's first appearance to Road America's 4.048-mile road course.  Hoover Orsi set a new track record with a time of 2:01.278 (120.160 mph) to take the pole.  David Rutledge will start second, followed by rookie Jason LaPoint and Jonathan Macri.

Tomorrow's 17-lap, 68.82-mile race is scheduled for 2:30 pm and will be televised via espn2 on Sunday, August 26 at 10:00 am ET.

Further information is available on the team’s web site at www.worldspeed.com as well as the official Atlantic series site at www.toyotaatlantic.com