Bowmanville, Ontario (July 22, 2012) – Muscle Milk Pickett Racing scored its first Canadian hat trick on Sunday with another convincing victory at the Mobil 1 presents the Grand Prix of Mosport.
The win was the third for the team at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and it completed a dominating performance by the Muscle Milk squad who have led all official practices, qualifying sessions, warm ups and races the last three seasons at the Canadian track.
While the team went on to win its fourth American Le Mans Series race in a row this year, the start of the race didn’t go to plan when the #16 car of Dyson Racing jumped the start and took over the lead.
However, that was short lived when birthday boy Lucas Luhr, who was driving with an ankle injury suffered on Saturday, took over the lead on lap 6 aboard his Michelin-clad Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a.
From that point on, the team didn’t really look back. While they found themselves fourth overall after pitting for fuel, tires and a driver change to Klaus Graf with about an hour and a half to go, the team quickly made it back to the lead 12 laps later.
Graf, who celebrated his birthday on Saturday with a pole position, continued to lead up until the checkered flag, giving himself and Luhr the best birthday gift they could ask for. With today’s ‘present’, Luhr now finds himself a lone second in the all-time win category in the ALMS with 39.
Muscle Milk Pickett Racing now leads the P1 Championship by 12 points over Dyson Racing. The team will be back in action in a little less than two weeks time at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
Muscle Milk Quotes
Klaus Graf, #6 Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a
“(About getting up to speed quickly after taking over driving duties from Luhr) It’s important to get into your rhythm and stay in it because you don’t want to lose concentration and focus. It’s imperative that you stay on it, do the job you have to do, get in the groove, do competitive lap times and that’s what I did, even though we had a pretty good lead. Sometimes a big lead is harder to manage than if you have to push all the way.
“I was also careful in traffic not to disturb the fights in the other classes. We had to be aggressive at our last race, so here we were a little more courteous to others.
“Winning here again, for the third time in a row and it also being our fourth consecutive race win this year means a lot for Muscle Milk Pickett Racing and our partners HPD and Michelin. We had a little excitement today but in the end we came out on top and once again increased our points lead. We couldn’t ask for more this weekend. Canada has always been good to us.
“We also had some Muscle Milk guests here this weekend, and it coincides with the launch of our new 14 ounce bottle in Canada, so we’re very happy to be able to offer them this win.”
Lucas Luhr, #6 Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a
“(Start of the race) I don’t know what happened there. I didn’t see the green and didn’t hear it on the radio. I was just about to accelerate and I looked to the left and (Chris) Dyson was by me. We’ve seen it before in the past, that he is a little optimistic on the starting procedure but it worked out for us in the end.
“I was following him very closely; I was thinking it was just a matter of time before I got by him. You could see it clearly once I got by him, I was able to build a big gap. I was a little bit upset on the radio at first but then we were fully in control of the race and made a good call strategy wise which allowed us to do the race on only two stops versus others that did three.
“It’s great to win our fourth race in a row this season. The guys keep on doing an awesome job and it’s great to be able to reward them with this win.
“(About the birthday celebration) The best part of the birthday celebration was putting a cake into Klaus’ face but unfortunately they had planned pay back on me so I got cake in the face as well! That wasn’t so fun.”
About CytoSport
CytoSport, the maker of Muscle Milk®, is among the largest sport nutrition protein beverage companies in the U.S. and offers a complete line of protein-enhanced powders, shakes and bars. Muscle Milk® was recently named the 2008 Ready-to-Drink Beverage of the Year by bodybuilding.com, Best Functional Beverage and Beverage of the Year by BevNet and 2009 Company of the Year by Beverage Forum presented by Beverage Marketing Corporation and Beverage World. For more information on Muscle Milk or additional CytoSport products, visit: www.cytosport.com.
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