COOPER TIRES PRESENTS THE CHAMP CAR ATLANTIC CHAMPIONSHIP POWERED BY MAZDA
CHAMP CAR MONT-TREMBLANT
· Long Time Coming: The Champ Car Atlantic Championship returns to Circuit Mont-Tremblant for the first time in 31 years with this weekend’s festivities as part of the Champ Car Mont-Tremblant. Quebec racing legend Gilles Villeneuve won the last Atlantic race at Mont-Tremblant after starting from the pole position in 1976, while Elliott Forbes-Robinson won and Bill Brack started from the pole in the first Atlantic race at the venue in 1975.
· Cranking It Up: This weekend’s Champ Car Mont-Tremblant falls in the middle of a stretch of three races in a row for the Champ Car Atlantic Championship. The final eight events will be completed in a span of seven weeks between Cleveland on June 24 and the season finale at Road America on August 12. After this weekend, the Atlantic series heads to Toronto on July 8. After a one-week layoff, the series returns to action with a doubleheader in Edmonton on July 21 and 22 with the penultimate round of the championship slated for July 29 in San Jose.
· Fantastic Full Field: With 24 cars entered to start this weekend’s races, it will mark the seventh consecutive events with 24 entries or more for the Atlantics to start the year. April’s race at Long Beach featured 30 cars – the most for the series since the Montreal event in 1999.
· Who’s Hot: Points leader Raphael Matos picked up his fourth victory of the season last weekend in Cleveland and also won the first three races of the season at Las Vegas, Long Beach and Houston. He has not finished worse than sixth in any event this season. He has also led every lap in all three races that he started from the pole position. French rookie Franck Perera is the only driver in the 2007 season to have finished every race inside the top-five positions with best results of third in the second half of the Portland doubleheader and last weekend in Cleveland. Mexican rookie David Garza has improved his finishing position in each of his five starts in the series, with a career-best result of eighth in Cleveland.
· O Canada: This weekend’s Champ Car Atlantic field will feature five Canadian drivers. Kevin Lacroix, a rookie from Saint-Eustache, Quebec is entered with Brooks Associates Racing, while Toronto natives James Hinchcliffe and Robert Wickens will drive for Sierra Sierra Enterprises and Red Bull Team Forsythe, respectively. Edmonton’s Mike Forest will drive for PR1 Motorsports and Coquitlam, British Columbia’s Adrien Herberts is entered for Paladin Motorsports. In addition, the Jensen MotorSport team—which fields American drivers Frankie Muniz and Tom Sutherland—is based in Newmarket, Ontario.
· We Are The Champions: Champions from some of the top developmental series from around the world will compete in Atlantics this season. Nearly all of the open-wheel training grounds in North America will feature last season’s champions competing in Atlantics in ’07 including the Star Mazda Series (Adrian Carrio), Formula BMW USA (Robert Wickens), FF2000 (J. R. Hildebrand) and Formula TR 2000 (Carl Skerlong). In addition, rookie Giacomo Ricci claimed the F3000 Italian and Euro titles in 2006. Atlantics will also include race winners and standout competitors from not only these formulas but also from the Skip Barber National Championship and top international series including A1GP, GP2 and European Formula Renault.
· Youth is Served: It’s safe to say that the ’07 Atlantic field is the youngest in series history. Among the 24 drivers expected to compete this weekend at Mont-Tremblant, the median age is just 21.5 years. If you remove from the equation 44-year-old Bret MacDonald—who is the only driver in the field who was born before the last Atlantic race at Mont-Tremblant—the average age for the rest of the field is just 20.6 years. This includes 12 series racers who will line up for this weekend’s races as teenagers. The youngest of them all is John Edwards of Red Bull Team Forsythe, who is 16.
· Rookies Aplenty: The ever-growing youth in the series translates into a very deep rookie class for 2007. Out of the 24 expected entries this weekend 18 of those drivers are considered rookies for this season. The battle for series Rookie of the Year honors is expected to be almost as heated as the fight for the overall series crown. Robert Wickens currently leads the rookie standings with 140 points, just six ahead of Franck Perera.
· Going Global: The international appeal of Atlantic racing has also never been more evident than in 2007. Drivers representing nine different countries are expected to be in action this weekend including competitors from the United States, Canada, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Brazil.
· American Pride: Despite such a diverse cultural background among the series drivers, the future of American open-wheel racing is just as bright as ever as evidenced by the U. S. talent in Atlantics. Half of this weekend’s field – or 12 drivers in all – hail from the United States.
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