FRONT ROW START AND PODIUM FINISHLYNX RACING ACADEMY DRIVERS CONTINUE TEAM TRADITION IN FORMULA PACIFIC F1600 SEASON OPENER AT THUNDERHILLWith a podium finish, a front-row start and a pair of top-5's, Lynx Racing Academy drivers Alex Keyes and Andrew Evans showed extremely competitive form in their first-ever open-wheel race during the Formula Pacific F1600 season-opener at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Northern California."We're delighted with the performance of Alex and Andrew in their first race as Lynx Racing Academy drivers" said team principals Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty.  "The Lynx philosophy has always been 'learn to go fast,' and that's what they did; you could see them learning all weekend, and getting faster every time they went out on track.  We expect great things of these young men this season."Qualifying for Saturday's Race 1 was held under clear skies and sunny conditions, with temperatures in mid seventies and a slight breeze.  Throughout the session, it was a battle among the top-3 teams, and Keyes qualified his #32 Lynx Racing Academy/Symbizio.com/Spectrum/Honda on the outside of the second row, in fourth place, while Evans started behind him in row 3 in the #19 Lynx Racing Academy/Spectrum/Honda.  The car numbers are the same as those used by Alex Barron and Memo Gidley during the team's championship-winning Atlantic series season in 1997.At the green flag, the competitors were challenging each other at every turn.  Battling a balky gearbox, Evans moved up to 3rd, but dropped back a place and finished just one place off the podium.  The race was won by Colton Herta, son of IndyCar veteran Bryan Herta.While Evans was battling on track, Keyes was battling a mysterious fault with his car's ECU that kept his engine from firing on the grid.  He was late out on track as a result and retired after the pace lap."Not exactly how you want your first race to go, but both drivers handled it very professionally, looking for solutions and looking forward to Round 2 on Sunday," says Lynx Racing Academy team manager Steve Cameron.  "Their example helped inspire the team to make sure the cars were perfect for the next session.  We got Andrew's gearbox sorted out and replaced the brand-new ECU on Alex's car, and both were ready to get their weekend turned around."   And turn it around they did.  As with Saturday, the conditions at the scenic 3.0 mile, 15-turn Thunderhill road course were ideal; clear and sunny with temperatures in high sixties and a slight breeze.  Qualifying was extremely competitive, with the top four drivers finishing within one second of each other and many having improved their times over Saturday. 

Alex Keyes, enjoying the kind of day he should have had on Saturday, put his #32 Lynx Racing Academy/Symbizio.com/Spectrum/Honda on the outside of the front row, with a lap of 1:51.117, just 0.483s behind pole sitter David Cheng.  As in Round 1, Andrew Evans qualified 5th with a lap of 1:52.419 in his #19 Lynx Racing/Spectrum/ Honda, and had a clean drive to a 5th-place finish."The day before the race was the first time I'd seen the Spectrum race cars in their Lynx Racing Academy livery, and they looked great" says Evans, 15, a 9th grade student at Skyline High School in Sammamish, Washington.  "The Lynx team did a great job all weekend, and I was pleased at how agile the cars are through the corners.  I learned a lot, including the fact that I need to pay more attention to conserving my tires; we have one set of tires for an entire weekend, and the next event has three races rather than two."Keyes had a bit more to contend with in Sunday's final as he was in a heated duel for third place, a battle that saw the position change hands several times before it finally concluded with him crossing the finish line third and securing his first-ever open-wheel podium."It's amazing how much you learn at your first race, including how to be patient with your car when it won't behave," said Keyes, 15, a 10th grade student at Vista Del Lago High School in Folsom, CA, currently on independent study for Spring 2013 semester.  "I'd say the big lessons I came away with are that you catch other cars a lot faster than you catch karts, so there's more passing than you'd think.  And you can, in fact you have to, go a lot deeper into the turn on your brakes than in a kart.  I found myself adjusting the brake bias during the race to keep my braking zone as deep as possible.  It was a big lesson, and made a big difference in the race.  Id like to thank my sponsor for the race, Symbizio.com, a company that raises sponsorship money by finding businesses willing to do B2B.  Its going to be really cool because the company is going to let other drivers access these businesses to raise money for their racing too.Cameron Racing, in addition to Lynx Racing Academy drivers Alex Keyes and Andrew Evans, fields the  No. 17 Cameron Racing/Piper/Honda for Joey Bickers, a 20 year-old student at Moorpark Community College.  Working closely with the Lynx duo off-track, but battling hard with them on track, Bickers started his season on the outside of Saturday's front row and wound up on the second step of the podium.  On Sunday, he qualified 4th and finished 4th.The next event for the Pacific Formula F1600 Series will be held on May 18th and 19th at Buttonwillow Raceway Park and will be a triple race weekend.

About the Lynx Racing AcademyLynx Racing was formed in 1990 by Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty, the first women in racing history to own a championship-winning open-wheel racing team.  Lynx was created in order to provide opportunities for young drivers to move up to Indy Cars and was both a racing team and driver development program.  The team won multiple championships in the Formula Atlantic series, and graduates of the program include Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice, top Grand-Am racers Michael Valiante, Dane Cameron, Memo Gidley and Bryan Sellers as well as Alex Barron and Patrick Carpentier.  The Lynx Racing Academy will utilize the same training techniques and many of the same personnel as the Lynx Racing team and competes in Pacific Formula F1600, a series designed to provide a cost-effective stepping-stone from karting to open-wheel racing.About the 2013 Pacific Formula F1600 SeriesFormula F1600 is the world's premier junior development category in motor sport.  The Pacific Formula F1600 Series is a 6-weekend, 12-race series based on the U.S. West Coast and is designed to provide an affordable transition for drivers as young as 13 to move from karting to open-wheel racing.    The formula is designed to reduce costs to about the level of a season of karting, and cars are built with a light-weight tubular space frame designed to maintain the highest levels of driver safety.  No less than eight World Formula One champions have come from the F1600 open-wheel class, including Michael Schumacher, Mikka Hakkinen, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Jody Scheckter, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.