Group-A Racing & Scarallo Sweeps Inaugural Round of Circuit Battles

 Rosamond, CA – March 7^th, 2011 – The highly-anticipated Circuit Battles series got off to an exciting start this past weekend at Willow Springs International Raceway. The weekend ended with the inaugural victory taken by Group-A Wheels and Joey Scarallo in a dominant performance.

The qualifying session on Sunday morning had Joey Scarallo in the Group A Wheels Pontiac GTO lay down a blistering lap to take the first ever pole position for the brand new race series/reality show. Joey put a lap together to gather the pole position by 7 tenths over the Nissan 350Z driven by Gary Sheehan. Not only did Joey take the pole, but he set the Circuit Battles track record along with it.

Kicking off the afternoon activities for Circuit Battles was the 5-lap Super Session race. The results of this race would fill the double-elimination bracket for the heads-up battles. Joey Scarallo went flag to flag to secure the #1 seed in the bracket. Gary Sheehan was able to make it an interesting race, challenging Scarallo in most of the turns. However, the extra power in the GTO’s V8 engine favored Scarallo on the long straights. Sheehan finished 1.548 seconds behind Scarallo to secure the #2 seed.

With Ballard and the ABF MINI out of action, Scarallo got the bye in Round #1. The winners bracket semi-finals would have Joey Scarallo up against Paul Brown, and Cort Wagner facing Gary Sheehan. An intense battle would play out between Scarallo and Brown, with two of the more closely-matched vehicles in the competition. Scarallo would pull out the close victory by only 3/10ths of a second, while setting the fastest lap time of the day in the process, at 1:24.062. Gary Sheehan dispatched Cort Wagner in the all Fontana Nissan semifinal battle, setting up a winners bracket final with Joey Scarallo.

In the final battle of the winner’s bracket, Joey Scarallo and Gary Sheehan were primed for battle. Joey continued to put in his perfect performance in the Group-A Wheels Pontiac GTO and knocked the 350Z into the losers bracket moving him into the final.

Sheehan was able to win his heat in the loser bracket setting up a rematch again Joey. He would have to  beat Scarallo twice in order to secure the overall event victory, having lost to Scarallo in the winner’s bracket final earlier. Sheehan was able to keep it close in the corners, but the it was not enough to know Joey and the Group-A Wheels Pontiac GTO off the top step of the podium, giving Joey and Group-A Wheels the inagural victory in Circuit Battles!

All of the excitement that had been predicted with the unique format of Circuit Battles competition certainly played out! The teams are now prepping for Round #2 at Firebird International Raceway the weekend of April 9^th & 10^th.  Several new teams are expected to join the action in Phoenix, adding further drama to Circuit Battles.

The action from Willow Springs will be featured in the first episode of Circuit Battles on VERSUS, air date to be announced shortly.