Liam Kenney has steadily improved throughout the season, qualifying well and and showing the pace to run with the leaders. He has mastered his standing start technique and has adapted well to the frantic style of wheel-to-wheel racing in Europe. It's that "bump and run" style of racing that has worked against Liam so many times this season, having good positions taken away by contact from other drivers. However, as they say - "that's racing" and you had to believe that sooner or later the luck would turn in Liam's favor. Today it did.

Liam's Speed Secrets coach Gord Bentley, sent these notes after the race. Gord also took the photo of Liam shown below...

Liam finished in 3^rd place after starting 5^th. He enjoyed another great start showing that he definately has that monkey off his back! he ran in a 4 car pack in 5th place for half the race as the front two cars checked out. Liam was getting pressured from behind but kept his cool and the car behind eventually made a small mistake giving Liam a 3 second cushion and still in contention for third spot. With about 5 laps to go the car in 4^th spot tried to make an optimistic out-braking manoeuvre on third and spun and rolled backwards and into the third place car which took them both out of the race, moviing Liam up into third. 

At that point Liam still had pressure from behind as the driver behind was gaining on him again  but time ran out and Liam finished in 3^rd spot. Liam’s teammate Adrian finished 2^nd today so it was a great atmosphere under the tent after the race.  

There is one big thing that we learned from today’s race and that is Liam is too slow at getting champagne bottles open. He got seriously hosed down up on the podium today but now that he's out of the shower he smells a lot better now. Another cool part was that there was a guy and his son right next to the podium with a huge American flag waving it the whole time Liam was up there. After the race they came over and wanted to have a picture with Liam but neither one spoke any English! Strange...

 After all that has gone on so far this season this 3^rd place feels as good as a win right now and is the first step to getting to that top step of the podium.

Congratulations to Liam and his team for this hard earned result. The next race is at Nurburgring August 21st. To follow Liam's season, log on to his website at www.liamkenney.com