Conquest Racing Scores Best Oval Starting Position of Season with Bernoldi

Conquest Racing recorded their best qualifying position on an oval this season in the IndyCar Series with an eighth place by Enrique Bernoldi during qualifying for the ABC Supply / AJ Foyt 225, round 6 on the 2008 IndyCar Series schedule. Bernoldi’s rookie teammate Jaime Camara qualified 24th.

After a strong performance in the earlier practice sessions, Bernoldi, the first driver to take to the track, continued to progress and impress in qualifying. The Brazilian sat for most of the session in the top-five with a four lap average speed of 165.216 mph but was relegated to eighth by the end of the session. Bernoldi was bumped by the likes of Dixon , Kanaan, Wheldon and Castroneves.

While Bernoldi remained in the top part of the charts, his teammate Camara found himself in the lower half of the time sheet in 24th position with a four lap average speed of 154.613 mph. Unfortunately for the Conquest driver, his car suffered fuel problems on his last lap which cost him to lose power.

The ABC Supply / AJ Foyt 225 will start tomorrow at 4 p.m. eastern time and will be broadcast live on ABC.

Total time: 1:28.4660

Lap 1: 22.1602, Lap 2: 21.9507, Lap 3: 22.1174, Lap 4: 22.2377

Average speed: 165.216 mph

"It’s not ideal being the first one out because the track is not as good as later on in the session but we had a pretty good run. We have been doing fairly well since our first on track session yesterday for the rookie practice and we’ve been getting better and better, I’m really happy with my qualifying today, it’s been my best so far. I’m much more comfortable in the car.

Even if Indianapolis is a completely different oval than here in Milwaukee , it has given me very good experience and it’s helping out for here because it’s increased my comfort level on the ovals. I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow. It will be another challenge because with 27 cars out there it will be pretty busy and there will be lots of traffic but it should be fun!"

Total time: 1:34.5329

Lap 1: 23.3759, Lap 2: 23.3717, Lap 3: 23.7235 Lap 4: 24.0618

Average speed: 154.613 mph

"We had a new fuel cell in the car, after Indy we had to change a lot of things on the car to be ready for this event, and we don’t know yet if we ran out of fuel or if it was a problem with the fuel cell. We just know the car lost power on my last qualifying lap because of fuel so we will look into it and find out what happened but everything will be fine for the race tomorrow. Again, it’s racing, things like that happen. Now we have to focus on the race and have a good and consistent one starting from the back."

"Enrique really put in a strong performance today. He just keeps on improving every time he is on track. You can tell that he is much more comfortable in this environment now and he proved it with his eighth place on the grid for tomorrow’s race, this performance means a lot to the team to be running up front with the ‘bigger’ teams like Penske and AGR.

Unfortunately for Jaime he had some fuel pressure problems on his last lap which caused him to lose some power. We will look into it and be ready for the race tomorrow." 

- Karina Redmond -