Group-A Racing & Raphael Forcier Earn Podium Result at Mid Ohio

Lindenhurst, New York (July 5, 2016) - After much anticipation, Group-A Racing and Raphael Forcier had a great learning weekend at Mid Ohio resulting in a podium finish. Friday hosted two open practice sessions for the teams on the tricky and technical 2.25 mile Mid Ohio Sports Car Course. Rain showers came Friday morning causing opening practice to be very limited. During the afternoon everybody saw clear sky’s and a dry track allowing Raphael to get valuable track time. At the end of the session Forcier finished 3^rd only 2 tenths off the pace setting time.

Qualifying Saturday morning saw interruptions with cars going off causing red flag stoppages. Raphael earned a 6^th place starting spot for the inaugural FIA Formula 4 United States Championship race.

During race one, Raphael got a good standing start jumping up two spots to 4^th. He then got himself into third, holding off Cameron Das. Raphael did a great job not giving anything up, but had an unfortunate spin with about 4 minutes to go. He did a great job rebounding to finish 6^th.

Race two Forcier started 5^th based upon having the 5^th fastest race lap during the opening race. Forcier got off the line cleanly again and this time was in a battle for fifth most of the race struggling a bit with overall balance in the cool morning conditions. He kept it clean and brought it home fifth.

Race three Raphael started 7^th and got his best standing start of the weekend, moving up to 5^th on the opening lap. He then quickly moved up to 4^th to start his chase on Michael Goodyear and Kyle Kirkwood for the 2^nd and 3rd place finish.. While chasing them down, Goodyear spun, forcing Raphael to take evasive action to avoid the spinning car. Raphael moved up to third but lost a lot of time to Kyle Kirkwood. Shortly after the full course caution came out, and the race ended under caution resulting in Forcier earning a 3^rd place finish.

Quotes:

Jonathan Scarallo: Group-A Racing Team Manager.

“All-in-all the weekend was a real good one. Everybody went into the weekend blind with very limited testing. Raphael did a great job of taking the coaching from us and applying it to be improving throughout the weekend. By the end of the weekend we really started to figure out some stuff on the setup of the car to suit Raphael; he was a real rocket at the end. Looking forward to getting some more testing in and coming back here for the next round in a few weeks.”

Raphael Forcier: Driver #62 Parizeau Pawulski Architects

“I am pretty happy with our opening weekend, building up speed every race to find a place on the podium. Big thanks to Group-A Racing helping me achieve that milestone and we will continue getting further up the grid.”