Tony Ave Racing and Ave Motorsports Collect Podium Finishes in the Ryans Companies Independence Day Classic

July 7, 2015

BRAINERD, Minnesota (July 6, 2015) - Tony Ave Racing and Ave Motorsports collected more podium finishes in Sunday's Ryans Companies Independence Day Classic, Round 6 of the 2015 Trans Am Championship, at Brainerd International Raceway (BIR).

Doug Peterson, who won the pole for the TA class during Saturday's "Fast Five" qualifying at BIR, finished third in the 100-mile/40-lap race in the No. 87 3Dimensional.com Corvette. The podium finish marks Peterson's fifth consecutive top-three result at the Brainerd track.

Finishing second was Cliff Ebben, a TA-class competitor running an Ave Motorsports-built AR-1 chassis, No. 36 Stumpf Ford/McMahon Group Ford Mustang. Ebben started third and waged a great battle with eventual race winner, Amy Ruman.

"Doug was content to follow Amy and let her control the pace, unfortunately he got caught out by traffic a couple times which really affected his race," Ave said. "I believe Doug has podiumed every time he's raced at Brainerd. Cliff has at least four career wins, and came close to another one, but just couldn't quite get there this weekend."

David Pintaric, driver of the No. 57 Kryderacing Corvette, who started seventh, finished just shy of a podium in fourth-place. He rounded out a nice run of second, third and fourth place finishes for the Ave Motorsports' AR-1 chassis.

Paul Fix, in the No. 4 Classic Tube/StopFlex/Car Coach/Royal Purple Corvette, qualified fifth but suffered a hit on Lap 15 and was classified 10th in the TA class.

"Paul Fix got taken out in a pretty hard hit by another car while they were running through traffic," Ave said. "Unfortunately that ended his day."

Of the Tony Ave Racing TA2 "house cars," Tony Ave himself, driver of the No. 70 Lamers Motor Racing/Highpoint Farms Mustang, improved his seventh place start to finish fifth in the very competitive class.

"I had a good enough car to win and was moving up even though I was running to a predetermined pace," said Ave, winner of the Lime Rock Park Trans Am TA2 round in May. "Unfortunately, I got caught a lap down due to the fact the series doesn't have a wave-by procedure even though we were running all four classes together."

Competitors will get a bit of a break in the schedule before the next Trans Am event, Round 7 of the 2015 Trans Am Championship, on August 14 - 15, 2015 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The TA2 class division will race Friday, August 14, in the First Energy Muscle Car Challenge, presented by 3-Dimensional Services, and the TA class races in the Next Dimension 100, presented by First Energy on Saturday, August 15.

Follow Ave Motorsports on Twitter at @AveMotorsports and on Facebook at Facebook.com/AveMotorsports . You can also follow the action throughout the weekend at www.GoTransAm.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com/GoTransAm and on Twitter at @GoTransAm. Live timing and scoring is available online at GoTransAm.com/live-timing and on the Race Monitor app.