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Halliday enjoys ALMS return despite Petit Le Mans retirement |
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Tuesday, 07 October 2008 |
Liz
Halliday’s return to her native USA didn’t end as she would have hoped
after an accident for co-driver Dean Stirling forced an early
retirement at the Petit Le Mans race. However, despite that
frustration, the California-born dual sportswoman enjoyed her outing
with Creation AIM.
With
the team’s Creation CA07 inside the top ten in the P1 class, Stirling
had a big off at turn 1 just over three hours into the race and the
resulting damage after hitting the tyre barriers meant he was unable to
continue. The #888 car had already had an incident-filled race when
Halliday had a small spin after being chopped by a GT2 Ferrari during
her stint in the car.
Yet despite that misfortune, Halliday admitted she had enjoyed her return and thanked the team for their hard work.
“It’s too bad that we didn’t finish, but sometimes these things happen in motor racing,” Liz
said. “The good news is that Dean is ok. I was lucky in my incident
because the Ferrari was about to turn into me and I had to turn sharply
to avoid a serious accident, which resulted in a spin, but thankfully I
didn’t hit anything and we managed to get going again safely with some
help from the marshals.”
The race started with the #888 Creation in 19th
on the grid with Stuart Hall driving a strong opening stint to move the
car up the order. Halliday continued that progress before her incident
and the team looked set for a strong top-ten finish before Stirling’s
off.
Liz said: “I haven’t raced at Road Atlanta for two
years and it is my first time here in a P1 car which was pretty
exciting! The car felt really good and we were all quick during the
week which is credit to the team who worked hard and did a good job.
“Now we’ve got to look towards Laguna Seca in two weeks time and focus on getting a good result there.”
Liz
will now head back to the UK for one night before returing to the
saddle for a week at the Boekelo International CCI*** event in Holland
with her horse Fox.
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