Dreyer & Reinbold Racing Had Ups and Downs in Edmonton
26 Jul 2009
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (July 26, 2009) – The Rexall Edmonton Indy was filled with ups and downs for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada today. The team ’s drivers, Tomas Scheckter (No. 23 MonaVie) and Mike Conway (No. 24 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing), finished 18th and 20th respectively.
As the green flag dropped, both drivers had a strong start, but trouble would set in early on. Conway, who started from 11 th position, was squeezed between two cars. As a result Raphael Matos made contact with his front wheel, which be! nt the steering column and caused him to run off course in Turn 14. Luckily, the 25 year old was able to drive the car back to the pits and the team diligently worked to replace the steering rack. On lap 33 Mike re-fueled and went back out. From that point on the Brit ran strong laps and clocked the fastest lap of the race on lap 39 at 1:02.6691 seconds. Firestone nominated the performance for the Firestone “Tire-ific” Move of the Race. Fans can vote for him on www.indycar.com. Conway finished in 20th position.
Scheckter had a good clean start as he gained two positions in the first two laps, going from 16th to 14th position. The South African was able to settle in and begin to race, but unfortunately things changed on lap 16. He hit a curb and began to slow down. Scheckter came into the pits to refuel and change tires. He went back out, but the steering was skewed, so he came back in and the team replaced all four dampers on the No.23 MonaV ie machine. He was able to go back out on lap 35 and run consistent laps. Unfortunately on lap 94 Scheckter spun and made contact with the retaining wall in Turn 10. He finished 18th .
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing heads back to Indianapolis as they will have two days to prepare the cars before heading to Kentucky.
What they had to say…. …
Mike Conway, No. 24 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing: ”It was a disappointing result. We thought that we had a good car coming into the race. In the first corner I got squeezed. I was coming up on the inside and people were coming across which messed up my line and Matos came over. He touched my front wheel and it felt like it bent something. I thought it was okay and on the last corner I went to turn left and the car wouldn’t turn it just went straight off. We came in changed the rack. We were able to get back out, but at the point it was just a test for us. We weren’t able to fight for position. We just stayed out of everyone’s way and got some laps in. We were happy to get the fastest lap of the race, but it was also disappointing at the same time because we could have had a good finish if we didn’t have the incident in the beginning.”
Dennis Reinbold, co-owner Dreyer & Reinbold Racing: “ ”It was a disappointing weekend. With Mike we started off in 11th place and going into turn one he had a car on both sides of him and one chopped down in and broke the gearing inside the steering arm. We brought the car in and fixed it and got it back out. It’s a real shame because we were the fastest car of the race by two tenths of a second. We set the fastest lap of the race and you just hate to waste opportunities like this, because today c! ould have been our day. With Tomas, he incurred some damage early on in the race. It wasn’t very good for us, because both of our cars were fast.“
