Wilson will be making his third appearance at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend as he qualified 12th for tomorrow's race, his best effort at TMS. He recorded a four lap qualifying speed of 213.602 mph. In 2008, he made his first start at the 1.5 mile oval where he qualified 23rd and finished in 27th place after making contact and in 2009 he started 17th and finished 15th after making contact with the wall.
It was announced yesterday that Scheckter would replace the injured Mike Conway and get behind the wheel of the No. 24 Roll Coater entry for Saturday's race. The Cape Town, South Africa native will be making his 11th start with the team this weekend. Scheckter will be visiting Texas for the 11th time. He has had much success at the 1.5 mile oval, with two top-ten finishes (1-2005, 10-2006), led 288 laps in ten starts at the track, and his best start was first in 2005 when he won from being on the pole. Scheckter has recorded three poles at Texas Motor Speedway and has one victory.
Tomas will start 18th on the grid tomorrow after recording an average qualifying speed of 212.904 mph. As a tribute to his teammate and friend, Mike Conway, Scheckter had a helmet painted especially for the race and on the top of it reads "Get Well MC".
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing will be on track for the Firestone 550 in Fort Worth, Texas on June 5th. The race telecast will air live on Saturday, June 5th at 8:00 pm (CT) on VERSUS. The race will air live on the IMS Radio Network, XM channel 145, and Sirius channel 211. For more updates on the team, please visit www.dreyerreinboldracing.com.
What they have to say about the Firestone 550:
Justin Wilson, No. 22 Charter: "I thought we had a decent qualifying run today in the Charter Communications car. It was hot and slick on the track, but the run was comfortable and I was able to keep my foot in it the entire run. We will work on our race set-up in the final practice tonight and get the car dialed in for tomorrow."
Tomas Scheckter, No. 24 Roll Coater: "The car felt alright. We were not as quick as we wanted to be, but to be honest my thoughts are with Mike and I hope that he has a good recovery. We would have liked to get the No. 24 car a little bit higher for him. We will work on it and I think we have a good race set-up. I just want to give an extra thanks to Roll Coater and Mona Vie for being on the car."