BRASELTON, Ga., October 3, 2008 - It was a tale of two missions for Cumming, Ga.-based Tafel Racing in qualifying here at Road Atlanta for tomorrow's 11th Annual Petit Le Mans. The championship-contending No. 71 Tafel/Bell Micro Racing Ferrari F430 GTC will start third in the American Le Mans Series' penultimate round with Dominik Farnbacher (Ansbach, Germany) and Dirk Müller (a native of Germany now living in Monaco) driving. The No. 71 put in a strong effort to win the pole position while the No. 73 Tafel Racing Ferrari F430 GTC, shared this weekend by Alpharetta, Georgia's Jim Tafel, Pierre Ehret (Santa Rosa, Calif./Germany) and Alex Figge (Denver), focused on additional seat time over outright speed and will start 14th in class.

Technical Director Tony Dowe (Cumming, Ga.) held Müller, the 1999 Petit Le Mans class winner, in pit lane for the opening moments of the 20-minute qualifying session to help clear the 2.54-mile, 12-turn facility. When released, Müller made an immediate impact on the time charts with the No. 71 Bell Micro Ferrari. The 2000 American Le Mans Series GT2 Champion turned the second quickest lap at that point in the session with a one minute, 19.510 second lap. Müller's hot lap would drop to third quickest as the No. 87 turned in a time 3/10ths of a second faster. The German made several attempts but was not able to drop below the 1:20 range. The decision was then made to bring the No. 71 in to refuel and balance the air pressures of the Michelin tires. However, the best efforts of Müller and the Tafel crew were not able to better the time. 2007 event runner-up Farnbacher and Müller will start the 1,000 miles or 10 hour race from the inside of the second row of the GT2 field.

The No. 73 Tafel Racing Ferrari chose a different approach for its qualifying effort. The yellow-accented Ferrari had missed much of the week's testing and practice first with a gearbox issue and then with a broken header on two different occasions. Due to the lack of seat time engineer David Fullerton opted to use the qualifying session as a practice for Ehret and Figge who had the least number of laps in the car. Open wheel standout Figge took to the track first in the No. 73. He turned a quick time of 1:23.096, 14th in class, before quickly handing the car over to 2005 24 At Daytona GT class winner Ehret. Ehret then closed the session to reacquaint himself with the V8- powered Italian exotic he last drove at the season- opening 12 Hours of Sebring. Ehret joined Jim Tafel and Allan Simonsen (Denmark) to a fourth-place finish, the car's best result of the year thus far, at Sebring.

The No. 71 Bell Micro Ferrari and the No. 73 will have a 25 minute warm-up session to fine-tune the cars prior to tomorrow's Road Atlanta endurance classic.

Six-and-a-half hours of live coverage of the 11th Annual Petit Le Mans on SPEED begins at 11 AM (ET), October 4. XM Satellite Radio will broadcast the first two hours of the race and will return to live coverage at 8 PM (ET) and follow the event through to the checkered flag on Channel 166. Live timing and scoring of each on-track session and the live American Le Mans Series Radio Web broadcast can be found at www.AmericanLeMans.com.

BRASELTON, Ga., September 26, 2008 - Teams in every sport seek the "home field" advantage. The emotional support of the local crowd, the comforts of sleeping at home and the familiarity of your surroundings is an indefinable boost to performance. For Tafel Racing, that home field advantage couldn't have come at a better time than Petit Le Mans. The local knowledge of the 2.54-mile, 12-turn Road Atlanta facility could give that additional spark to the No. 71 Tafel/Bell Micro Racing Ferrari F430 GTC of Dominik Farnbacher (Ansbach, Germany) and Dirk Müller (a native of Germany now living in Monaco) and the No. 73 Tafel Racing Ferrari F430 GTC driven by Alex Figge (Denver) and Jim Tafel (Alpharetta, Ga.). Currently sitting second in GT2 championship points, the Bell Micro entry can make significant inroads to the team's first American Le Mans Series championship with a victory at the 11th Annual Petit Le Mans on October 4.

The Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, just 45-minutes from Tafel Racing's Cumming, Ga. shop, is the second longest event on the American Le Mans Series schedule. The endurance event comes at a decisive point in the 2008 GT2 class championship with just one race remaining after the checkered flag falls at the end of 1,000 miles or 10 hours, whichever comes first. Sophomore American Le Mans Series racer Farnbacher and 2000 GT2 Champion Müller have captured three class victories, five fastest race laps - including the last four events - and one pole position in the first nine races of the 11 race season. Only on-track debris which damaged the No. 71 at the season-opening 12 Hours of Sebring and a starter failure in Detroit have significantly delayed the championship chase for the Bell Micro machine. The No. 73 has a season-high of fourth at Sebring and has two consecutive sixth-place finishes in the two most recent rounds.

Road Atlanta has been very good to the team in the past. In 2007, Tafel Racing earned its highest finish of its rookie season, second, here with Farnbacher sharing the No. 71 with Wolf Henzler (Germany). It was Farnbacher's and the team's highest American Le Mans Series finish until taking their first victory at St. Petersburg, Fla. earlier this year. Müller has been the most successful of the drivers in the endurance classic. He took the class victory from the pole position in 1999, the race's second running. Müller added two more podiums (second in 2001 and third in 2000) in three other starts in the "Petit" and won the class pole position during a two hour, 45-minute race in the spring of 1999. Like the team, Road Atlanta is the home track for Jim Tafel. Tafel, who will be making his second career Petit Le Mans start, took his initial race driving schools at Road Atlanta. Figge will be making his Petit Le Mans debut this year but had his initial shakedown runs with Tafel Racing here at Road Atlanta. Many of the crew have stood in victory lane with other teams but a win with Tafel Racing in front of family and friends would be especially savored.

For the first time in Petit Le Mans history, live, full coverage of qualifying for all four classes will be offered on www.SPEEDTV.com. The coverage will begin on Friday, October 3 with GT2 and GT1 time trials at 3:25 PM (ET).

Six-and-a-half hours of live coverage of the 11th Annual Petit Le Mans on SPEED begins at 11 AM (ET), October 4. XM Satellite Radio will broadcast the first two hours of the race and will return to live coverage at 8 PM (ET) and follow the event through to the checkered flag on Channel 166. Live timing and scoring of each on-track session and the live American Le Mans Series Radio Web broadcast can be found at www.AmericanLeMans.com.