CLEVELAND - Two veterans and a young up and comer dominated Friday's Trans-Am on the Tarmac, Round 6 of the 2003 Trans-Am for the BFGoodrich® Tires Cup Championship, at Burke Lakefront Airport. At the head of the pack was Scott Pruett, who's dominating performance was only matched by the consistent efforts of runner-up finisher and rookie sensation Jorge Diaz, and veteran Max Lagod.

Paul Gentilozzi, who finished a provisional second, was placed fourth after the race. Gentilozzi, driver of the No. 3 Jaguar R Performance XKR, was penalized two positions for violating Trans-Am Series Rule 1.8.13: 'Unjustifiable Risk.' The penalty was assessed due to incidents during the race, which involved Michael Lewis (No. 12 Westward Tools/The Crank Jaguar XKR) and Bobby Sak (No. 10 Revolution Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette).

Pruett simply turned in a dominating performance Friday. The driver of the No. 7 Jaguar R Performance XKR lead all 48 laps of the race from the pole, set the fastest race lap (1:13.475), earned his fourth victory of the season, and retained the lead in the Drivers' Championship. In the process, Pruett won the BFGoodrich® Tires Take Control Award for leading the most laps and the $2,000 Flowmaster American Thunder Challenge Award.

Pruett took the lead at the start, and was never seriously challenged in the event. However, his victory was anything but easy, as his team owner, and three-time Trans-Am Series champion Paul Gentilozzi was closing quickly late in the event.

'It's been a great weekend,' said Pruett, who also won his fifth Jaguar Pole this season on Thursday. 'I've always loved Cleveland. It's a great track. You can be aggressive, challenging, let it all hang out here, you can do some pretty wild moves and the track will give. Here, you don't have to worry about hitting the wall.

'This is a pretty special place because it is the one and only road course where you can come as a fan and watch the whole track,' added the two-time Trans-Am Series champion. 'For me, it's been just a great weekend. I ran good and hard. Toward the end, I was sliding around a little bit and the car had developed a bit of a miss. I saw Paul coming back there. He was running hard. I'm glad we were able to hold him off.'

Diaz's second-place finish is the best of his young career. Interestingly, his best finish prior to this season—11th—came here in his first Trans-Am Series start in 2002.

'Back home, it's always hot, and I'm used to racing in the heat,' said Diaz, referring to the hot and humid conditions on race day. 'But, my helmet cooler failed five laps into the race. At that point, I couldn't wait for the race to be over.

'It was just a fun race,' added Diaz. 'It wasn't easy to get around, especially on that last restart. I thought I had the car to beat, and it worked out. I wish all of the tracks we visit were new to me. I like it better when I'm racing it for the first time, because I have no expectations. I was a little bit upset about qualifying, but I'm just happy about the race…and the race is all that counts.'

For Lagod, the third-place finish was the second podium of his career. Lagod finished second at Reno in 1997. Lagod is the owner/driver of the No. 83 Hypermax Engineering Chevrolet Camaro. Lagod was the only driver who elected to run BFGoodrich® Tires' harder (75) compound tire.

'I caught up in the first turn, and I didn't think there was a corner on my car that wasn't broken,' said Lagod. 'But that fired me up and got me going. We worked our way back.

'We've never really had a really good car here,' added Lagod. 'So, based on my past experience here, we chose to go a different direction with the setup and run the harder compound tires. Harder tires allow you to use up the car, without hurting the tires. On the restarts, it was all we could do to hold position. However, the tires came back in a couple of laps, and gave us a podium finish.'

Stu Hayner's fifth-place finish was especially significant, considering he did it without a passenger side door on his No. 2 Trenton Forging/GMAC Commercial Finance Chevrolet Corvette. Hayner had to pit early to fix the damage, recovered from being one lap down and scored the top five.

'It was a pretty physical race,' said Hayner. 'I'm not sure what happened to the door. We came in, and went a lap down. But the crew had the car dialed in. I really thought we had the best car on the track.' The race ran in one hour, 15 minutes and 44 seconds, at an average speed of 92.274 miles per hour. The race was slowed by the caution flag twice—both times for debris—for a total of five laps.