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Valiente wins season opener in Mexico
By Tom Berridge, Burnaby NOW reporter
Burnaby's Michael Valiante won the opening race of the Formula Toyota Atlantic racing series with a half-second victory over fellow Canadian Johnathan Macri at the Tecate/Telmex Monterrey Grand Prix in Mexico Sunday.
The 23-year-old Valiante qualified fourth on the grid but took the lead from outside polesitter Joey Hand on the sixth lap.
He held on for his fourth checkered flag as the No. 1 driver for the Lynx Racing team at the 3.386-kilometre Fundidora Park raceway.
Valiante finished the 32-lap race averaging 130.791 kilometres per hour. Macri was 0.448 seconds behind in second, while Team Rahal driver Danica Patrick is believed to be the first female driver to finish on the podium in the 30-year history of the series.
Fellow Burnaby driver Marc De Vellis finished seventh with Sierra Sierra Racing, nearly 25 seconds back in the 16-car field in his rookie season start in Toyota.
Last year, Valiante finished fourth after a seventh-place start in Monterrey and, after the first day of qualifying, it looked like history might repeat itself.
Valiante fought electrical problems and engine heating issues, mustering just the eighth-fastest time during provisional pole qualifying Friday.
But later Valiante managed to log the fourth-fastest lap on Day 2, giving the North Burnaby open-wheel racer his eighth top-10 qualifying performance in his past nine races, dating back to last season.
The victory was also Valiante's seventh podium finish since joining Lynx in 2001, when he placed runner-up in two of just five races entered.
"We had to run very low aerodynamic downforce to make up for our lack of top speed, so I was really skating around out there," said Valiante in a post-race press release.
"I was able to pull out a fairly large lead, but it was using up my tires too quickly, so I backed off just a bit until the gap to the second-place car was down to about one second by the end of the race."
Valiante's next race is April 13 on the 3.170-kilometre street course in Long Beach, Calif., where he won in 2002.
But it's still too early to break out the champagne, Valiante says, adding that more development on the new engine is needed to catch up to the competition.
"People have made more gains than we have, and more development on the engine is needed," he said after the race.
"But our car was at its best during the race. When you look at the time charts, we got better, better and better, consistently improving the car."
The Toyota Atlantic series is the triple-A baseball of open-wheel auto racing, where up-and-coming drivers hone their skills at over 260 km/h in front of the Champ Car team owners who are their potential future employers.
Atlantic cars are 'spec' race cars, placing a premium on driver skill and team preparation.
The 572-kg, single-seat race cars are powered by a 1.6-litre, 250-horsepower Toyota engine.
Long Beach 2002
Last year, Valiante won at Long Beach, beating Doricott duo Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty by over three seconds.
tberridge@burnabynow.com
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