Star Mazda Champ Shines in Atlantic Practice

Rookie driver Dane Cameron went two-for-two in his first Cooper Tires Presents The Atlantic Championship Powered by Mazda test with Genoa Racing, concluding the two-day Spring Training tune-up at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca atop the time charts.

Driving the No. 17Genoa Racing machine, Cameron logged a best lap at 1:15.447 (106.788 mph) in Tuesday’s morning session, which held up through the fourth and final session of Spring Training on Tuesday afternoon and turned out to be the quickest lap of Spring Training. It was an impressive outing for the 2007 Star Mazda champion, who was also quickest on Monday. The results of this test will undoubtedly be helpful as he looks to secure his program for the 2008 season.

“It’s great momentum,” Cameron said. “I struggled a little bit in Sebring and some of the other tests so far. It was great to get a bunch of momentum and do really well, and to prove that we’re going to be really quick the whole year. I’m still looking to finalize something for the rest of the season, but it was really, really productive. Most of the changes we made yesterday and all morning, we were getting faster and faster. This afternoon, the track was a bit strange. It was kind of going back and forth, with a lot of cloud cover coming on and off and a number of red flags and stuff like that. I don’t really feel like we had a great run in the afternoon, but we still weren’t terrible. We weren’t quickest in the afternoon session, but we were quickest overall. It’s been a really good two days. We’ll see where the next test ends up being, but even so, it’s a great bit of momentum to put everything from last week behind me and start moving forward and driving again. I’m sure looking forward to Long Beach now.”