MONTREAL, QUEBEC: After a season of showing speed each weekend, but suffering from a series of misfortunes, Spirit of Daytona finally showed its potential Saturday at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. The No. 90 Chevrolet-powered Coyote sat in the top 5 for most of the weekend -- starting fourth and finishing fourth -- a much-deserved run for a team that’s led 108 laps and sat on the front row five times – two poles – without a top 5 finish to show for it.
Drivers Antonio Garcia and Paul Edwards ran in the top 5 from the green flag to the checkered, narrowly missing a podium finish after falling a few laps short of catching the No. 5 Action Express Racing DP for third position in the race’s final minutes.
”I’m happy we had a good run. We had a top five car and we finished fourth. We just needed to get a good run under our belt,” said team owner/manager Troy Flis. “Everything went according to plan. That’s where we should have been today at this race track. The way the year’s gone it seems where you qualify is where you’re going to finish, because of the pace of the race. We qualified fourth, we finished fourth so I’m happy with that. The biggest thing is we had a good result.”
It was an important weekend for a team looking to build momentum going into the 2012 season. After prepping the car on the road following a 10th place run at Watkins Glen, the No. 90 DP unloaded strong in Montreal and didn’t miss a beat.
“I’m happy for the team to have a clean race and be where we deserved to be at the end of the day,” said Garcia. “We just need to keep it that way and we will win some races. We’ll take it, learn from what we have and just keep moving forward.”
“We’ll take fourth and look forward to Mid-Ohio. One more spot would have been nice, but we definitely took what we could get out of this weekend,” added Edwards. “Other weekends we didn’t quite get what we deserved so it’s good to get the best results.
Spirit of Daytona sets its sights now to the season-finale at Mid-Ohio where the team scored a top 5 finish one year ago. The team will look to finish the season on a high-note with a podium.
“I think we’ll have a good car at Ohio, so I’m excited. We’ve been strong there,” said Flis. “We get to go into Ohio with the guys having a little more confidence. We’ve had a fast race car at a lot of races, but haven’t performed. Now we’re performing well, and I’m expecting another good finish.”
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