World Challenge - Calvert Fourth for Phoenix at Long Beach

Calvert Fourth for Phoenix at Long Beach

April 22, 2015 / Written by Phoenix American Motorsports

Long Beach, CA – Long Beach, CA – Preston Calvert drove a heads-up race to score his third straight top-five finish at Long Beach in the Pirelli World Challenge GT Cup presented by Momo in the No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup for Phoenix American Motorsports. The Calvert Dynamics and Phoenix Performance entry avoided various incidents on the streets of Long Beach, California, on Sunday afternoon to work his way through the field to a fourth place finish.

Building upon a fifth place run on Saturday in St. Petersburg in March, Calvert improved to fourth on Sunday, and tied his best result of the season with another fourth place run in California. Another strong result adds to Calvert’s season-long points tally, placing him fourth among GT Cup competitors.

About Phoenix Performance
Phoenix Performance is a premier performance tuner, providing maintenance, tuning and diagnostic services for foreign and domestic cars and trucks, as well as performance upgrades and tuning for street and track cars. The team's 32,000 square-foot-race shop is located 30 miles west of downtown Philadelphia and has built over 30 SCCA Runoff-winning cars. For 2015, Phoenix American Motorsports plans to run a multi-car, multi-class effort in the Pirelli World Challenge. Additional High Res Photos Available Upon Request

For more information, call 610-482-0141 or visit www.phoenixperformanceinc.com and www.phoenixperformance.net.

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"The GT Cup race within the Long Beach Grand Prix was again a challenging street fight,” said Calvert. “The first order of business was to avoid damage to the car with all the congestion and crashes among other competitors. I was again fortunate to be able to navigate through this obstacle course and run a clean race. This allowed me to finish fourth, as some other GT Cup competitors were unfortunate to become involved in contact and other mishaps.”

A new standing start procedure in place from St. Petersburg was set to give the GT Cup field their own light sequence following the GT field departing from the front straight. With a GT car stalled on the grid, the GT Cup field faced an aborted start, assembling under a yellow flag until the race restarted a few moments later.

From there, it was a hectic episode of close concrete walls with numerous caution periods, and even a blocked track in front of the GT Cup competitors in Long Beach’s iconic hairpin turn at one point.

The 11-turn, 1.968-mile street course is now in the books as Phoenix American Motorsports heads across the country to race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, this coming weekend. Calvert will get back to his normal four-race weekend format, with two GT Cup races and two GTS races, where he will be back in the No. 35 Mustang Boss 302 alongside teammates Andrew Aquilante and Kurt Rezzetano.

“The team enjoyed the great organization and hospitality of the Long Beach Grand Prix event, as well as the enthusiasm of the many fans of sports car racing who attended,” added Calvert. “We are now headed to Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama for the next round of the Pirelli World Challenge season, where we will rejoin our GTS cars and the rest of our team. We look forward to another successful week of competition."

Watch the action from Long Beach on CBS Sports Network, Sunday April 26 at 3:30pm Eastern.

Phoenix on the web: http://www.phoenixperformance.net/, http://phoenixperformance-news.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/PhoenixAM

Team partners include Calvert Dynamics, Phoenix Performance, Ford Performance, Ron Davis Racing Radiators, Hawk Performance Brakes, Penske Racing Shocks, Brembo Brakes and Go Puck.