Garcia soldiers on for Laguna finish.

Venezuelan Alex Garcia, driving for Transnet Racing in the CART sanctioned Toyota Atlantic Championship, finished his fourth race in the series in 17th position at the historic Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California.

Garcia, who started from 23rd position, said after the race that his car is still having balance problems. "It was a very difficult and frustrating weekend. We still have the same problems we experienced in Milwaukee one week ago. After that race we found a couple of things we felt needed modified so we thought the changes would help us find an adequate set-up for the 014 chassis. The car ended up a little better at Laguna Seca, but we are still too far from we need to be."

Garcia also commented: "We hope to go to the circuit at Buttonwillow (California) for a couple days of testing. Hopefully, we will close the gap between the series leaders and ourselves. Our primary objective is to solve the balance problem before Portland, the next race on our schedule (June 15)."

Greg Sorrentino, Transnet Racing Team Manager said: "We are still struggling with the set-up of the car and trying to find the proper balance. Our next immediate step is to go to Buttonwillow. Our goal is to understand what this car is asking us to do, which we have not yet adequately accomplished.
"We seem to not be communicating properly with the car. We made some progress from Friday to Saturday, but we still have a significant amount of testing to do. We expect that a couple of days testing without the race weekend pressure will help us focus on what we need to achieve."

Sorrentino also reported that the data acquisition system is not providing sufficient relative data. "We will be working very diligently with the data acquisition engineers to improve the system and receive the feedback we require. At Laguna Seca, the system worked better but we are going to work even harder to improve it and help us get closer to what we need."

The next race of the CART Toyota Atlantic Championship will be held Saturday, June 15th, at the road circuit in Portland.