Prendeville Finishes All 40 Laps
Saturday at St. Pete For Racing Laps for
Best Friends
04/05/2008
By Linda Mansfield, Restart
Communications
ST.
PETERSBURG, Fla., April 5 - Forty was the magic
number for Andrew Prendeville Saturday during
the first of two Firestone Indy Lights races
that are part of the Honda Grand Prix of St.
Petersburg.
His first goal was to finish all 40 laps of
Saturday's race with his Best Friends Animal
Society No. 5. He did just that, guaranteeing
the most donations possible to Best Friends by
the fans that made donations through
racinglapsforbestfriends.com; at
Thursday's PetStop at the Tampa Bay SPCA; or at
the Racing Laps for Best Friends booth in the
parking garage next to Mchaffey Theater and
adjacent to the 1.8-mile street course.
Prendeville started eighth Saturday afternoon
and advanced two positions on lap one. He stayed
in sixth place until Arie Luyendyk Jr. passed
him with two laps to go, and ended up seventh at
the checkered in the 23-driver field.
Passing is hard on street courses, and there
were only three yellows to tighten up the field
for restarts. The walls are also very close to
the track surface and it's easy to get in
trouble, but Prendeville kept his car under
control throughout the race despite difficult
conditions.
"It was a bit like driving on ice, and we're not
really sure why," Prendeville said afterwards.
"We had a good enough finish to move up in the
points. We need to improve for tomorrow, but we
got valuable points while others may have fallen
back. We also finished all the laps, and we
thank everyone who made donations to Best
Friends."
The top four finishers from Saturday's race were
inverted for the starting line-up for Sunday's
race, with the rest of the field following as
they finished on Saturday. That means
Prendeville will start seventh tomorrow, beside
Cyndie Allemann in Row 4.
Tomorrow's action starts with a 10-minute
warm-up session at 8:05 a.m. followed by the
second 40-lap race at 10:45 a.m. Both races will
be covered live on
indycar.com. They'll also air on
ESPN2 at 2 p.m. Eastern time on April 10.
Fans can make their pledges for Sunday's St.
Petersburg race and the other events remaining
on the schedule at
www.RacingLapsForBestFriends.com.
Bertil Roos Racing School raffle tickets can be
purchased on this website also.