DUNO
AND WALLACE WIN GRAND PRIX OF MIAMI !
Milka
Becomes 1st Woman in History to Win Grand American
Race
February 28, 2004 - Milka Duno and her teammate Andy
Wallace delivered
stellar results for CITGO with a first place finish
in the second round of
the 2004 Rolex Sports Car Series - the Grand Prix of
Miami at
Homestead-Miami Speedway February 26-28, 2004.
With this win Milka becomes the first woman in the
history of the Grand
American Road Racing Series to achieve an overall win.
The CITGO-sponsored Howard-Boss Motorsports team's
#2 Pontiac Crawford
Daytona Prototype, emblazoned with CITGO's distinctive
red and orange paint
scheme, built upon their success at the Rolex`24 at
Daytona with a
hard-fought and very skillfully run race.
The Grand Prix of Miami, under clear skies and warm
temps, started with the
green flag waving at 3:17pm. Milka was elected to start,
Andy was chosen to
finish. Starting the race in the 15th spot, Milka began
the hard job of
moving through the field on the twisty Homestead track. In
a short,
error-free 62 minutes behind the wheel Milka advanced
from 15th to 7th - a
gain of 8 positions in 43 laps.
At 5:15pm, after being in the car for only an hour,
Andy took the lead with
only 22 laps remaining. In the relatively short space
of an hour, Andy had
advanced the car's position by 6 places. Then pitting
on lap 90, he fell
back to 4th. He then raced to 3rd. With under 10 laps
to go in the 109-lap
race and after a second full coarse yellow, the two
cars ahead of him, in
1st and 2nd place, decided to play a high-stakes game
of bumper cars. Andy
pulled back ever so slightly so as to not get tangled
up in any potential
mishap. His racing experience and wisdom paid off as
the #2 CITGO Daytona
Prototype took the checkered flag.
"I started the race in 15th place and immediately started
to think about how
to advance our position" said Milka. "One of the prototypes
in front of me
appeared to be having some sort of problem, but I was
surrounded by two GT
cars and was yet unable to make a pass. I just kept
safe and kept looking
for the best time to make my move. As soon as I would
pass one car and
advance our position I would start looking for the
next one. The team helped
me a lot with a great strategy and I was very happy
to be able to hand off
the car to Andy in 7th place. I've just been told that
I'm the first woman
ever to win a Grand American race - which is both very
exciting and quite
and honor," added the jubilant Milka.
"I had every confidence in Milka that she wouldn't
make any errors - that
she would take it cleanly in the beginning and then
just get faster and
faster - which is exactly what she did," said Andy. "With
every lap she did
while in the car she just kept getting faster and faster.
When I got in the
car I just slammed the doors down and I left. That
was it. I was just going
to drive until the wheels came off. I was trying to
get up to the two cars
in front of me so that when they started racing each
other I could just
sneak by - which is what I did!"
Milka, Andy and the Howard-Boss Motorsports team will
have a little more
time than normal to savor their win as their next race
on the schedule isn't
until April 8-10 at Phoenix International Speedway.
This provision result
wil advance the Howard-Boss Motorsport team to the
provisional first place
in the Daytona Prototype category.
This event is one of the few races on the schedule
that was not broadcast
live on SPEED. This race can be seen on SPEED this
coming Sunday, March 7,
2004 at 4pm EST.
CITGO, based in Tulsa, Okla., is a refiner, transporter
and marketer of
transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals, refined
waxes, asphalt and
other industrial products. The company is owned
by PDV America, Inc., an
indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos
de Venezuela, S.A., the
national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela. For more
information on CITGO visit www.citgo.com .
Additional information on drivers Milka Duno and Andy
Wallace is available
at www.milkaduno.com and www.andywallace.com ,
respectively. For more
information on the Grand American Sports Car Series
please visit www.grandamerican.com .
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