Shane Lewis to Run Three Cars in Two Races at Mid-Ohio

LEXINGTON, Oh., August 4, 2004 � Shane Lewis will be busy this weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The Jupiter, Fla. resident will continue his role as the lead driver of the No. 7 PAP-Parts/ Southard Motorsports BMW-FABCAR Daytona Prototype in Saturday's premier Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series' event, the Mid-Ohio Road Racing Classic. He will also return as the lead driver of the Nuzzo Motorsports Mini Cooper S in the Grand-Am Cup ST class on Sunday. While this is not unusual for the two-time Grand-Am Cup class winner, what adds to his workload this weekend is that he will race both the No. 20 Habberstad Mini Nuzzo Mini Cooper and the No. 21 car. The move is not unprecedented for Lewis. He has raced both the Minis earlier in 2004 and, in 2002, Lewis drove to two-podium finishes at the Six Heures of Mont Tremblant driving two different cars in two different classes. Further adding to the already hectic weekend will be the ongoing development of the PAP-Parts BMW-FABCAR. Southard Motorsports' owner Steve Southard has brought world-renowned racing engineer Ron Mathis to help fine-tune the car. Mathis has worked with both Lewis and co-driver Vic Rice in the past. Most successfully, Mathis was a part of the Ferrari effort that Lewis led with at Le Mans in 2003. Mid-Ohio is also the home track for Southard Motorsports magnifying Lewis' desire to put on a good show for the hometown fans. Shane Lewis: “This is definitely going to be a busy weekend. We are working at developing the PAP-Parts Daytona Prototype with Southard Motorsports, I'll be starting one of the Nuzzo Minis and finishing in the other plus this is the home track for the Southards. Fortunately, I love this track. Mid-Ohio is really a driver's track. It requires more out of you mentally and physically than a lot of tracks but that is what I love about it. Unfortunately, all the things that make Mid-Ohio so demanding are all the areas we're having trouble with in the Daytona Prototype. We are continuing to develop the car to get the most out of it. In fact, we were working so hard on the car that we had to skip a test at VIR (Virginia International Raceway) that we would have liked to have been at. Some of the other DPs have snuck around us and everyone at Southard Motorsports is working very, very hard to close the gap. Steve has brought on Ron for this weekend to help with the car. We've worked great together in the past so I am confidant that we can make some major progress this week. The whole team really wants to perform well everywhere we go but Mid-Ohio is the team's home track. That puts a little more importance on this weekend.” For more on Shane Lewis please see www.shanelewis.com. To learn more about Southard Motorsports, please visit www.pap-parts.com or www.autoassets.com. For more on Nuzzo Motorsports, log-on to www.nuzzomotorsports.com.