Honda Car Forum

The driving duo of Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud were unmatched Sunday in
the Larry H. Miller Utah Grand Prix, the fourth race on the 2009 American Le
Mans Series.

Coming off their first ALMS overall win at Long Beach last month, de Ferran
and Pagenaud showed phenomenal speed throughout the weekend with a new qualifying
mark Saturday by Pagenaud and a dominating performance Sunday in the No. 66
de Ferran XM Radio Acura ARX-02a sports car.

Adding to the de Ferran Motorsports victory for Acura was a hard-fought LMP2
win for the Lowe's Fernandez pair of Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz in
the No. 15 Lowe's Fernandez Acura ARX-01b. The Utah win was the fourth
consecutive LMP2 class title for the Mexican drivers this year.

The victory for de Ferran Motorsports was an anniversary present for the team,
as the Brownsburg, Ind.- based squad made its ALMS debut at Utah last year,
finishing third overall in an LMP2 Acura ARX-01b.

But Sunday, there was little doubt that de Ferran, the 2003 Indy 500 champion,
and Pagenaud, coming off a win last week in Spa, Belgium in the Le Mans Series
race, were going to be denied. De Ferran started the two- hour and 45-minute
contest in impressive fashion, jumping to a 30-second lead in the first 30 laps.

The veteran then passed off the No. 66 machine to the 25-year-old charger Pagenaud,
who quickly clicked off the race's best lap times. At the end of the 103-lap
race, Pagenaud held a 73-second advantage over the No. 9 Patrón Highcroft
Acura ARX-02A of St. Petersburg winners David Brabham and Scott Sharp.

The 1-2-3 sweep was the second straight for Acura in the American Le Mans Series.

De Ferran was able to slip away from Sharp in the first half hour of competition,
as the Patrón Highcroft driver was kept behind slower cars. When Brabham
jumped in the Patrón Highcroft Acura for the second half of the race,
he made a brief charge at Pagenaud, but the young French driver was undaunted
in his drive to the win.

The LMP2 battle with the Lowe's Fernandez Acura team and the Mazda cars
from Dyson Racing was an all-out assault to the end.

Early in the race, Diaz had to fight his way through the two Mazdas, as traffic
played a key role, and Fernandez used a good pit strategy to hold the lead until
the checkered flag. But, one of the Mazdas played blocker on the last couple
of laps to give the Dyson team car a shot at Adrian's Acura on the final
lap. Fernandez was able to hold a charging Butch Leitzinger to the line.

ACURA QUOTES:



GIL de FERRAN (#66 XM Radio de Ferran Acura ARX-02a): "I had
a good opportunity at the start to open a gap when I came out of turn one in
first place and thought 'here's my chance', so I pushed as hard as I knew how
to try and open a gap. We managed to build an over-30 second lead by the time
we had our first stop. Simon drove extremely well for the rest of the race,
and we kept building distance from the second-place car all the way to the end.
This is a very meaningful victory for us, our second in a row. This was our
debut event last year, and we came so close to winning it then. It's fantastic
to come back and achieve the win this year - such a great win. It speaks volumes
about the team and the Acura program."

SIMON PAGENAUD (#66 XM Radio de Ferran Acura ARX-02a): "Gil
did all the work. I didn't have much to do. He gave me the car with a massive
gap. From there, I kept pushing so as not to lose my focus. I pushed as though
there was someone right behind me the entire time. The car was behaving perfectly.
The team called the strategy just right. The tires were behaving well. Not much
to say, to be honest. Three wins in a row for me. Now I just have to try to
keep the streak going."

DAVID BRABHAM (#9 Patrón Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-02a):
"The time we lost at the start trying to get past the turbo car of Field
really cost us. That was really the defining moment. The two Acuras are so evenly
matched out there that anything like that really hurt us. After that I was driving
as hard as I could but it was simply too big a gap. "We got points and
that was really important. We've lost a little bit of our lead, but there is
still a long way to go."

SCOTT SHARP (#9 Patrón Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-02a):
"Today wasn't what we hoped for. Congratulations go to the de Ferran team. They
seemed to have a little bit on us all weekend, but that was compounded by getting
stuck behind Jon Field's car early. The turbo cars have a really big advantage
at this high altitude. I was hoping he was going to be able to get past Gil
as well, but he slotted in between us. That was really frustrating and put us
at a disadvantage early. Second place points are still good however, when it
is not your day."

ADRIAN FERNANDEZ (#15 Lowe's Fernandez Acura ARX-01b): "It
was a tough race. It was a little frustrating at the beginning when Luis was
losing time to the leaders with the traffic. There were a few P1s that we were
quite a bit quicker than and he just couldn't pass them. I give Luis a lot of
credit to have the patience because it would have been so easy to throw it away
at the beginning knowing that you were losing so much time. We were losing four
or five seconds a lap sometimes, to a point that we were almost 50 seconds behind
the leader of the P2s. At the end, it was very close. We barely got in front
of the No. 20 Mazda, and we finished one or two seconds ahead of them. It was
a great victory and very well-deserved by everyone on the team. After our past
performance here, it was nice to win especially after such a close race with
the Mazdas."

LUIS DIAZ (#15 Lowe's Fernandez Acura ARX-01b): "It was a
great day. The whole team did a great job. We knew the disadvantages of being
a little bit slower on the straights [than the Mazda cars], but the Acura is
a great car and the guys did a tremendous job in the pits. Adrian did a super
job at the end under pressure. It was an awesome race. We fought hard for this
one."