Drewer finishes 5th at New Jersey, in Round 5.

Australian Tom Drewer driving for Daily Planet has taken fifth place in Round 5 of the 2009 IMSA Lites Championship, at the “Mazda Formula X” weekend held at New Jersey Thunderbolt Motorsport Park, near Millville, New Jersey. Drewer started the race much lower on the grid than he expected after qualifying eighth.


"We finished practice yesterday 4th in the timesheets, and therefore I was obviously a little disappointed with eighth in qualifying, although everyone is so close here. Another few hundreds of a second would have put me 5th on the grid."

Drewer started the race strongly, made up a couple of places off the start line and after passing his team-mate Jonathan Gore found himself behind Johnny Meriggi.

"It was an extremely tough race. We battled it out for around 30 minutes of the 45 minute race, probably a good 20 laps. I was faster than Johnny everywhere, turns 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, except for where it counted. I couldn't get the power down coming out of the last turn. I tried everything but I just couldn't feed in the throttle as quick as he could.

My car was much faster in a straight line, though and I would reel him in going into turn 1 but I was just never quite close enough to make the pass stick. I must have attempted to pass him a dozen times, but I just never had quite enough. So, I focused on pressuring him every lap, but to Johnny's credit he just didn't make a mistake. It was a great battle!"

Drewer will be back on track tomorrow at New Jersey for Round 6 of the 2009 IMSA Lites Championship presented by Frisby Performance Tire.