“We were just struggling for pace all weekend. I was just following Borja (Garcia) and couldn’t get close enough to pass…but some of that is just the nature of the track. It’s really too bad for us. Everyone is going to have their off-weekends, but ours just happened to be on a weekend where there were double points available. We’ll come back from this and I’m sure everyone else will have their “off-moments” as well, putting us right back in the mix of things.”

John finished 5th in race 1 at New Jersey. He passed his way up to fourth, made a mistake under braking to give P4 back to his teammate, and came home 5th. The car is not what it needs to be according to the team, and he and his teammate are about 1 second off Summerton and Simona. They will come back tomorrow. John starts P6 after struggling in qualifying.

Quote from John:
“We moved up a few positions so that was good for the points today, but we still don’t have the pace of the leaders (Summerton and De Silvestro). We’ll see what we can do tonight and aim for the podium tomorrow.”

Driver Gap Best Lap

Driver Gap Lap Time
John Edwards 0 01:11.8
Simona De Silvestro 0.033 01:11.8
Jonathan Summerton 0.449 01:12.2
Borja Garcia (R) 0.695 01:12.5
Markus Niemela 1.127 01:12.9
Tonis Kasemets 1.185 01:13.0
Frederic Vervisch (R) 1.373 01:13.2
David Garza 2.865 01:13.6
James Winslow(R) 2.874 01:14.7
Max Lefevre (R) 4.064 01:15.3
Richard Zober 5.482 01:16.6
Frankie Muniz 12.203 01:23.1
Michael Nacol (R) 15.083 01:25.7
Michael Mallinen (R) 16.353 01:28.1

“I'm looking forward to going back to New Jersey. I enjoyed driving the track last year, and finished well there despite an incident in race 2 that put me back to third from the lead, only a few laps from the end. Hopefully this time we can be fast and stay out of trouble to get back to the top step of the podium!”

HDNet’s first two live television presentation of the Mazda Atlantic Championship are Saturday and Sunday, June 13 and 14, when the Atlantic Championship contests its first doubleheader of the season at New Jersey Motorsports Park.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Atlantic Championship races will be carried on HDNet,” said Atlantic Championship President Ben Johnston. "We are delighted that one quarter of our schedule will be featured on live television with coverage of the doubleheaders in New Jersey and Chicago. The excitement provided by our drivers and teams is tailor made for high definition television, and we are grateful to MAZDASPEED for making this a reality.”

John leads the championship standings by five points, 36-31, over Simona De Silvestro heading into the doubleheader, which will be Rounds 3 and 4 of the 12-race 2009 championship.