Saturday, 17th May 2008

David Donohue earns second Rolex Series pole of 2008 Season; Fogarty to Start second Saturday at Laguna Seca.

David Donohue saved his best qualifying lap for his last Friday afternoon at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, running his fastest lap near the end of the session to win the pole for Saturday's RumBum.com 250 at the 2.238-mile, 11-turn track, the fifth race on the 2008 Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series schedule.

Donohue ran a lap of 1 minute 19.843 seconds (100.908 mph) on the eighth of his nine qualifying laps to win his second pole of the season in the #58 Brumos Racing Porsche Riley, and will lead the field to the green flag for the 112-lap, 250-mile race, which will start on Saturday at 1.45 pm [local time].

It marks his second pole position of the season, as he also topped qualifying at Homestead-Miami Speedway in March.

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"When you win the race, everybody packs up and leaves. Winning the pole is real important for the team, because it gives them an extra day of glory," noted Donohue.

"They get a great deal of pride and prestige in front of all of the other people in the paddock."

Donohue will be joined on the front row by Jon Fogarty, who gave the #99 GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing GAINSCO Auto Insurance Pontiac Riley its first front row start of the season with a lap of 1m 19.951s (100.772 mph).

Fogarty was also contending for the pole late in the session but a suspension failure led to an off-course excursion in the famed Corkscrew turn on his final lap.

"It was very strange. That has never happened to us before," said Fogarty. "I went around the lefthander at the top of the Corkscrew and I was under acceleration coming out and something went wrong with the right rear. Because I was turning right, I really didn't notice.

"It was a really good lap, I was up on my previous and I tried too keep my foot in it and luckily I didn't hit anything. So we will put it back together and we will go through it and it was still a good effort.

"Not the pole, but it is good and we have got an hour in warm-up to make sure everything is put together in a proper manner and still work on the car for the race."

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