ERIC CURRAN RACING

New Jersey Motorsports Park
Millville, N.J.
July 24, 2011

Boris Said put the Whelen Engineering – Marsh Racing Chevrolet Corvette C6 into GT class lead on the first lap of this past weekend’s GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series race at New Jersey Motorsports Park, but 59 laps later, a polite move by teammate and lead driver Eric Curran, resulted in a race-ending disaster for the team.

”Teddy Marsh and his guys gave Boris and I car that could win today,” said an exasperated Curran “and we were doing our part until I allowed a Mazda driver, who was a lap down, plenty of room for me to get by him. But instead, he lost control, slammed right into me, and ruined what we were hoping was our second win of the season. You give a guy room who is a lap down and the end result is he takes you out of the race…”

“I was really upset, but more than that, I’m frustrated and feel really bad for the Marsh crew guys. Their spirits have been so high for the last four or five races, especially after we won Road America. This was going to be another win, and instead, we get to beat the traffic out of the track.

“The Whelen/Marsh guys really had our #31 Corvette hooked up today. It was fast and consistent all weekend long. All those hours in the shop do pay off. And a special thanks to Todd for really making the chassis work amazingly well this weekend,” Eric said.

After qualifying second quickest, Boris Said roared to the Rolex GT class lead on the first lap and held the point in the nationally-televised race for 31 laps. He then dropped back to second place until lap 38 when an incident brought out the safety car and Eric replaced him in the cockpit.

After nine minutes of everybody playing “follow the leader” behind the Safety Car, Curran jumped to second place on lap 48 and assumed the sharpest end of the queue on lap 53. His lead grew to as much as 2.977 seconds before the race-ending incident in the 2h45min event.

Eric had a chemically-induced quiet day on Monday as he underwent scheduled for surgery to repair a torn left Achille’s Tendon.

Eric was scheduled to drive the CKS Autosport Camaro GS.R, with Ashley McCalmont in Saturday’s Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge series race, but Ashley, too, was involved in a race-ending mishap.

The next Rolex race is Aug. 11-13 at Watkins Glen International, as part of the NASCAR Sprint Cup weekend. The Whelen finished sixth at The Glen in June.