Conquest team happy with Day 1 at Road America

After his first race of the 2007 season, Jan Heylen and the Conquest Racing team used their week off to improve their knowledge of the DP01 in preparation for two days of testing at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. During the first testing session on Monday morning, Jan took the #34 Champ Car Grand Prix of Belgium / Cosworth / DP01 / Bridgestone to the top position. In the afternoon, the session was interrupted by a red flag and Heylen was unable to improve his earlier performance where he ended his day in the third position with a time of 1m44.68, just behind Simon Pagenaud and the leader Will Power.

“We had a very fast day that has given us a lot of confidence to move forward," began Heylen. “We had some good time away from the track which gave us a chance to process all of the information that we had from Portland International Raceway. We were quick on our first time out this morning and are greatly improving every time the team gets on the track which has been a good boost of confidence for all of us. We unfortunately missed our window of opportunity in this afternoon’s session and weren’t able to maximize our final set of tires because a red flag ended the session. Overall, I’m happy to see we could compete at the same level as the series leaders."

“I’m pleased to see how well Jan and the team are doing here at Elkhart Lake," said Conquest Racing team owner, Eric Bachelart. “I have seen a lot of direct improvement come from today’s session and I anticipate even more tomorrow. It was unfortunate that we weren’t able to maximize the usage on the last set of tires before the red flag but I think we had a strong showing today with a first place in the morning and a third place overall finish."

Conquest Racing now looks forward to a second day of testing at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. The fifth round of the 2007 season of the Champ Car World Series will be held at the Grand Prix of Cleveland on Sunday, June 24th at 1:00 p.m. EST. The race will be broadcast live on CBS beginning at 1:00 p.m. EST.