Bryan Sellers Earns Second Top-Five Grand-Am Finish In Second 2011 Start<b/>

BRYAN SELLERS EARNS SECOND TOP-FIVE GRAND-AM FINISH IN SECOND 2011 START

Young American Talent Assists Magnus Racing to Fifth in Six Hours of The Glen

WATKINS GLEN, NY, June 5, 2011 – Bryan Sellers ** has earned two, top-five finishes in only two Grand-Am Rolex Series starts in 2011; an impressive average for the driver who is splitting his driving duties across three major race series and a tire development program. Saturday, June 4, the Braselton, GA-resident assisted Magnus Racing to a fifth-place finish in the GT class at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. The Watkins Glen (NY) International success followed a second-place at the season-opening Rolex 24 Hours At Daytona earlier this year with Paul Miller Racing. Sellers’s performance over the weekend was so strong it warranted his being honored by the team to drive the final stint in the No.44 Magnus Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup entry he shared with John Potter (Salt Lake City, UT) and Craig Stanton (Long Beach, CA) during the six-hour race.

Sellers slotted into the second spot in the three-driver rotation between team leader Stanton and owner Potter. Stanton took the green flag in wet conditions, which quickly turned to a downpour flooding the 3.4-mile, 11-turn “Long Course” at Watkins Glen International. Sellers slipped behind the wheel of the green-and-white Porsche approximately one-third of the way into the race. Finding drying conditions, the team outfitted the car with racing slicks and challenged the former open wheel champion to find the quickest, driest path around the famous track laid out in the woods of Upstate New York. Sellers was more than up to the task quickly turning some of the fastest laps of the race. During the stint the young, American talent moved the car as high as second before turning the wheel over to Potter.

Sellers’s final stint in the car was even more impressive than the first. On a completely dry track, the Porsche fought to stay with the race-designed, tube-framed cars. Sellers began a war on two fronts: one to gain position and one to hold his current position against the unrelenting Camaro of Oliver Gavin (Great Britain). While keeping the Magnus machine in fourth with 15-minutes remaining, a full course cautioned waved allowing the Chevrolet to close up on the rear-engined machine’s bumper. As the green flag flew with just minutes left to run, Sellers set about his defense, braking later than he had all event. However, the purpose-built Camaro was able to out brake the German road-based machine just enough to sneak through. The high-horsepower V8 then pulled away from the flat-six Teutonic machine leading to the fifth-place finish.

The Watkins Glen weekend was a doubleheader for Sellers – his last scheduled of the season. In addition to joining Magnus in the Rolex Series, the Ohio-native reprised his regular role with Kinetic Motorsports’ No.33 Sail on Travel Inc./Vion-Hitachi Data Systems BMW M3 Coupe in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (CTSCC) Grand Sport (GS)-class. Sellers held the quickest practice laps for all combined sessions (two minutes, 2.235 seconds). During Friday’s race, the team suffered a power steering failure 40-minutes into the two-hour, 30-minute Continental Tire 150. Due to the malfunction, Sellers and co-driver Jade Buford (Brentwood, TN) gave-up as much as two seconds a lap to the competition. Despite this, the car finished 11th overall. The CTSCC event will be tape-delayed airing at 5 PM (ET) on June 12 on SPEED.

Quotes

Bryan Sellers:

About the Six Hours of Watkins Glen: "It was a pretty good day for us. There’s nothing better than being at the finish of a long race fighting for position. That whole last stint I put everything I had out there; it was qualifying laps, lap-after-lap to keep ahead of the Camaro. Unfortunately, we caught the last yellow and the restart changed the scenario. He was just too fast at the end. The battle was a lot of fun and it was an honor to be asked to take the checkered flag for Magnus Racing. The only disappointment was not being able to hold Oliver [Gavin] off at the end for the Magnus guys.”

About driving with Magnus Racing: “It was great to be back with Magnus Racing. John Potter has put together a great group of people who work really hard to get the best result. I am glad I was able to contribute to the effort this weekend and help them take a top-five finish.”

About the CTSCC event with Kinetic Motorsports: “The Kinetic BMW was fast all weekend. We rolled off the trailer in the right direction. We proved that the first session setting what would end-up being the quickest practice lap of the weekend for the GS class. We got into the race and the power steering went 40 minutes in. We were still decent but it’s frustrating if you think about what might have been. I can only imagine that we were giving up a second, second-and-a-half to the rest of the field without power steering and we were still staying with them. Jade drove a great race. We just don’t have much practice time in the car and we haven’t done much testing. I am never happy with an 11th-place finish but, in light of the circumstances, I guess we have to see the silver lining in it.”

For more on Bryan Sellers, please visit him on the web at www.BryanSellersRacing.com. Follow Bryan on Twitter (www.Twitter.com/BryanSellers) and Facebook.

Learn more about the teams:

Team Falken Tire, ALMS GT Class: www.FalkenTire.com.

Kinetic Motorsports, CTSCC GS Class: www.KSSMotorsports.com.

Magnus Racing, Rolex Series, GT Class: www.MagnusRacing.com.

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