For Immediate Release

Matt Lee & Twin tooth Takes Two Top Tens

New York, NY (2 May 2005) - Matt Lee brought home two top-ten finishes in his first weekend racing cars, and while he had been hoping for better results in his Formula BMW USA debut, he knows he is in the series to learn and build towards success in the future.

The Formula BMW USA series is designed to give karters, like Lee, their first experience racing cars. The series boasts a schedule that includes some of the best tracks in North America, supporting major events, including two Formula 1 weekends in June. To give the young racers maximum race experience, every Formula BMW USA race weekend has two races, with eight race weekends comprising the 2005 season. The opening weekend for the season was held at Laguna Seca, one of the most daunting tracks in the world.

Lee’s race results, with eighth and ninth-place finishes, were hampered greatly by the difficulty he had in the qualifying sessions, which forced him to start the races from back in the field.

“Qualifying was the biggest surprise for me,” said Lee. “I have always been good in qualifying, but I just didn’t know how far I could push it and ended up being too conservative. But that’s why I’m racing here, to learn how to get the most out of myself and the car every session and keep improving.”

Despite starting back in the field, Lee managed to get clean starts in both races and work his way up the order with some smart passes, taking advantage of others miscues in some cases, and outsmarting others to make up ground to the leaders.

“While we struggled in qualifying, my races were both just great,” said Lee. “I was really fast and I made a few good passes, so I know I can be competitive once we get qualifying figured out a little bit better.”

Lee’s enthusiasm about his racing is backed up by the numbers he was putting up in the car, including taking the third quickest lap of the second race.

Formula BMW is dedicated not just to developing fast race car drivers, but also to giving them the skills that are required of professional race car drivers outside of the car, including and not limited to, working with the media. To that end, the series hosted two media seminars for the drivers during the Laguna weekend.

“It’s good that they are giving us this kind of training, although three hours of class after a day at the track was a lot to handle!” said Lee.

On his way back home to Long Island, Lee was optimistic about the next race weekend, May 21-23 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, “Mid-Ohio should definitely be better now that I have two races behind me. With the cars being identical, qualifying is super important, so I am focusing on qualifying better so I can start closer to the front, if not up front,” said Lee. “I know how fast I can be in these cars and having seen what the other guys can do, I am feeling good about Mid-O.”