Problems continued today for David Martinez during qualifying for the Togoya Grand Prix of Long Beach.  The Mexican driver and the Forsythe – Pettit engineers made changes overnight to the car and after morning practice were confident that they could qualify in the top ten.  In the first minutes of qualifying things looked promising as the rookie driver managed to turn his fastest time of the weekend in only his third lap, and with the black Bridgestone Potenzas was quicker than both of his much more experienced teammates. 

Right as the tires were coming up to optimal temperature a red flag interrupted his qualifying effort.  But the real problems began after the green flag came out when after negotiation only a few corners the rookie radioed to his team that he will have to pit due to problems with his transmission.  The crew of the #37 Champ Car managed to fix the problem but Martinez didn’t have time to complete any more laps.  Despite only logging five laps on the timesheets, Martinez  managed to qualify 18th with a time of 1m08.645s.

Sunday’s race will mark the fourth start for the Monterrey native in the Champ Car World Series, in his previous three starts he has finished in the top ten twice and had one DNF (Did Not Finish) due to a mechanical failure.

David Martinez

#37 INDECK/Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone

“It´s a shame that we had that transmission problem because i think we were going to surprise a lot of people.  We made a lot of changes overnight and I this morning when I went out I could tell right away that we were going to be very strong.  During qualifying I actually turned a lap that was four tenths quicker but was taken away because the red flag came out just before I closed it, regardless that was with the black Bridgestones and what we needed was to get a lap with the Reds but we never got around to that because of the problem we had.  The important thing is that we have a great race car, we have a great strategy for tomorrow and with a little bit of luck we can achieve a great result.”