Andersen Racing’s Ricardo Vassmer qualified fourth; Jonathan Goring 14th; Phil Saville 16th; Jonny Baker 20th and Michael Fitzgerald 26th Thursday afternoon at Sebring International Raceway for Friday’s season opener of the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear.
Thirty-two cars are scheduled to take the green flag tomorrow at 3 p. m. and then duke it out for 45 minutes.
Vassmer, of Caracas, Venezuela, took only 2:00.517 to cover the 17-turn, 3.7-mile road course on his fastest lap during qualifying to earn the right to start in Row Two. He’s in the Andersen Racing No. 25, with support from Zoom, a top courier service; Meridiano Television; Santa Barbara Airlines and Citgo. His fastest lap took only five-tenths of a second longer than pole winner Dane Cameron’s best lap, and was done at an average speed of 110.524 miles per hour.
With 5 minutes to go in the session Vassmer was second only to Cameron, but Marco DiLeo and James Davison edged ahead in the closing minutes.
The effort was a testament not only to Vassmer’s talent but also to the hard work of the Andersen Racing team, based in Fairfield, N.J. His car sustained rear-end damage on Wednesday when another competitor hit Vassmer in the rear, and the team’s engineers and mechanics worked very hard to get his car back in good shape for qualifying.
The top six cars were less than a second apart and all six broke the track record of 2:01.002 that Brad Jaeger set last year in an Andersen Racing entry.
Goring’s best lap of 2:01.462 (109.664 mph) was only one-tenth of a second off a top-10 time and only eight-tenths of a second behind the top five in the very competitive field. Goring, of Norfolk, Conn., is sponsored by the Skip Barber Racing School, Alfas Unlimited and NPA Graphics.
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