Determined to redeem himself and solidify his Championship points-lead after a less than stellar result in Monterrey Mexico, Andreas arrived in Portland confident that this was the place to do it. source: Gail Shankland Unfortunately, his luck seemed to be going from bad to worse as his weekend started with less than promising results. After two tough qualifying efforts filled with rain, red flags and traffic, Wirth qualified a career-worst twelfth for the Trinity Carpet 100 at Portland International Raceway. "I was very frustrated. I couldn't feel the car at all; it was like there was something major wrong. We struggled a bit with set up, be we definitely headed in the right direction in the warm-up session at the end of the day. We were lost on Friday, but then got better by the end of Saturday, so we felt we would be good for the race." Despite his poor qualifying results Andreas was convinced that his luck would return since Portland had been kind to him in his rookie season of 2005, where he earned his first series pole and scored the first podium results of his career in the Portland double-header (3rd in race one and 2nd in race two). Hope was more convincingly restored on lap one as the front row starters made contact in the Festival Curves, taking them out of contention for the race, and diminishing the threat on Andreas' championship points-lead (the front row starters had been sitting 2nd and 3rd in the championship points standing). With some of the pressure lifted, Wirth whittled away at the pack with commanding style, ultimately resulting in a third-place podium finish. Truly an impressive run!
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