Grand American Rolex

Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates driver Memo Rojas of Mexico, in the No. 01 TELMEX Lexus, turned in a quick lap of 1:18.219 seconds around the sinuous 2.38 miles of Mid-Ohio to qualify in fourth position. His effort was only a 0.336-second deficit to the pole. The 15-minute qualifying session was run under a bright and sunny sky, raising the track temperature and robbing the Rolex runners of precious grip.

Lexus power stands firmly atop the Rolex Series driver, team and engine manufacturer championship standings coming into the season's mid-point at Mid-Ohio. Chip Ganassi Lexus-powered drivers Scott Pruett and Rojas lead comfortably by 36 points in the driver's chase for the title while their team sits atop the team standings by the same 36-point margin.

"I struggled with the tires coming in right away, so it wasn't until the end of the stint that the tires were working with me," Rojas said. "This is definitely a place where you want to qualify well because the passing during the race is very difficult. I kept pushing and pushing the TELMEX car and there were some laps were a slight bobble in a turn would cause me to lose time. For the very last lap, I changed a setting on the rear bar, which seemed to help the overall balance of the car so that I could push without sacrificing making a minor mistake on the track. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's race. We have a strong Lexus engine and we're in a good consistent starting position."

Shane Lewis, driving the No. 3 Lexus Riley for Ohio-based Southard Motorsports, will start from the 10th spot on the starting grid. He turned in a time of 1:19.363 seconds, good for an average speed of 102.425 mph. Lewis' co-driver Bill Lester lacks the track time at Mid-Ohio of his more experienced teammate, and as a result, Lewis didn't get as much track time during the morning practice session as he would have liked. Nonetheless, he was mindful of the bigger picture benefits.

"The only difficulty we had was that I sacrificed the time on the new tires so that my teammate could get more comfortable with this track," said Lewis. "But that's just what being a teammate means sometimes, so even though we had to guess a little about how the car would be on new tires, we should be good to go in the race tomorrow. The one thing we haven't needed to worry about one bit has been the Lexus power. The support has been fantastic. There is a lot of pressure for us to do well here at the team's home race, but it's really pushing the team to perform and we're excited about the race on Saturday."

The first half of the 2008 season has yielded four wins out of six races for Lexus, with second- and third-place finishes in the other two. The result is a 15-point advantage over Pontiac in the engine manufacturers race.