O'CONNELL RACING VIR RACE RECAP

ORANGE COUNTY, CA -- O'Connell Racing (OConnellRacing.com), a southern California based Grand American Rolex Series and NASCAR road racing team announced today that its string of good luck ran shy at Virginia International Raceway over the weekend. The team, having never raced at VIR and entering a newly acquired Porsche 997 GT-3 picked up earlier in the week, headed to Virginia to take on the famed circuit with the other Rolex Series GT teams. Early practice showed promise as drivers O'Connell and Speakman adapted to the track and got familiar with the new 997. O'Connell qualified the car 18th of 27 drivers with a time of 2.00.15. After the drop of the green flag the Taleo Grill/General Environmental Mgmt Porsche 997 started to move up through the field. Just prior to the Rolex Series new mandatory 45 minute pit stop, crew chief Barry O'Brien and tech director Roy Montgomery called the car in for fuel and tires. After the pit stop O'Connell radioed in from the back straight that the car had picked up a vibration and believed that the car had broken a shock using the curbs through the high speed esses on track. After getting off line to let other drivers pass, O'Connell picked up an extraordinary amount of debris rubber on his tires which caused the 997 to sway under acceleration and braking. O'Brien and Montgomery again brought O'Connell into the pits causing the team to go several laps down to the leaders. After a thorough inspection on pit lane it was determined that the suspension was intact and the O'Connell was sent back out. Roy Montgomery commented, " We learned a tough lesson today. Kevin thought we had a failure in the car and it turns out we just picked up debris on the tires. The Porsche having an independent suspension is very different than our NASCAR experiences with live axles and that cost us alot of time when we called the car in."

Shortly after the wrong call on the pit stop O'Connell was crashed into and pushed off course by the #70 SpeedSource MX 8. Kevin O'Connell commented, " I saw the Mazda in the mirrors and when I turned in for the corner the Mazda had carried alot of speed into the entrance to the turn and hit us in the rear quarter and and sent me towards the tire barrier." O'Connell brought the car into the pits for inspection and aside from the collapsed rear quarter the car was released from the pits. O'Connell drove for another 10 laps and was preparing to come in for a driver change when the final component failure ended the teams day. At the entrance to turn one O'Connell downshifted the 997 from 6th to 2nd gear and the clutch pedal never came back off the floor. With Speakman waiting to get in the car for his stint, the teams day was over.

The team will spend the next two weeks preparing to test its NASCAR Busch West car at Infineon as well as testing the 997 for Laguna Seca.

About O'Connell Racing: OCR is a California based road racing team that competes in North America in the Grand American Rolex Series and various NASCAR series. The team competes in select races in all of these respective series in an focused effort to bring the highest visibility and branding opportunities to its marketing partners currently managed by SpeedSport Branding, LLC: /General Environmental Management, Inc., Taleo Grill, General Pacific Group, LLC, Direct TV, Mothers Polishes-Waxes-Cleaners, Dragon Optical, Crow Enterprises, HPC Coatings, MicroFiberStuff.com, Neo Synthetics, Sparco USA, IMMS Inc., Wine Pavilion, StunningGuns.com, BASF and Arnett Designs.

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