- Earns Sunoco Hard Charger Award -

July 4, 2009

Watkins Glen, NY

The piercing exhaust note of the Whelen Engineering Chevrolet Corvette howled its way 22 times around the 3.7-mile Watkins Glen International road course today, and by a mere :00.22 seconds, gave Eric Curran another second place finish in the SCCA SPEED World Challenge GT series.

“The number two is all over this race’s results,” Eric said, “to the point it is spooky. Second in qualifying, finishing second for the second time in my career at The Glen, 22 laps to the race and a 22-one hundreds gap between myself and Dino Crescentini’s Porsche.

“Still, I had a great car beneath me today and I really had to work to get that close to Dino at the end. My thanks to my car owner, Sonny Whelen, Teddy Marsh and his Marsh Engineering crew, and all our friends and families who showed up to watch us race on a beautiful weekend.”

Eric came into the halfway point of the series fifth in the Drivers’ Championship points, left in the same spot, but he’s now 27 points closer to fourth place.

“What’s hurting us now,” Eric said, “is the 100 points we lost when we lost a second place finish at New Jersey Motorsports Park for technical reasons. If you re-do the points to this part of the season, we’d be leading right now.

“But that was then and this is now, and our focus is what’s ahead of us, not what’s behind. Watkins Glen was a solid, trouble-free weekend and we’re determined to have more of those. We really did hope for a win this weekend. The Corvettes always shine on high-speed corner tracks like here and Mosport. What’s too bad is the tracks in the future are not that way.”

Eric and the Whelen Engineering Corvette were second quickest in qualifying with a 105.778mph average speed around the 3.4-mile road course, but started in fourth position after the new tradition of a heads-or-tails coin toss by the fastest qualifier inverts the starting position of the five fastest qualifiers – or leaves them as they qualified.

“That put the Porsches of James Sofronas and Dino Crescentini ahead of me on the grid. I knew that would be a problem because of their ability to accelerate out of corners and their 200lb weight advantage vs. the Corvette, and it was,” Eric said.

By lap three, however, pole-sitter Jason Daskalos and his Viper went wide in a turn, allowing room for Eric to go to the third spot with Crescentini and Sofronas ahead of him.

Sofronas slipped to third on lap five, promoting Eric to second place, but the positions switched again on lap eight.

Eric re-gained the runner-up spot with a pass in turn eight on lap 15 and that was the way the cars ran to the finish at lap 22, or 74.8 miles.

The only question was how close Eric would get to Crescentini, and could he make the pass?  The lead was cut to :00.487 with one lap to go, but knocking that number in half – one car length - was the final outcome.

“The Porsches are always strong, especially at the end of the race when their weight advantage really shows,” he noted. “Based on three wins in the first five races, by three different drivers, I think there is pretty good proof just how strong the Porsche really is with the rules package,” he said.

Eric’s drive, however, was well-noticed by SCCA Pro Racing officials who awarded Eric the race’s Sunoco Hard Charger trophy.

This coming Saturday, July 11, Eric will experience his first oval track race when he races the Marsh Engineering team’s circle track version of their Coca-Cola Chevrolet Monte Carlo at Thompson, Conn.