St. Petersburg, Florida: (March 31st, 2005) Leighton Reese of Minnetonka Minnesota will take his high speed Banner Engineering Chevrolet Corvette C6 to the high speed streets of St. Petersburg Florida for his first ever visit to this venue as the SPEED World Challenge GT Series returns to the Tampa/St. Pete area after a 7 year hiatus.

"I have never raced there (St. Petersburg), but traditionally I have had good success on street circuits in the Trans-Am Series," Reese said of racing on temporarily built race tracks that run on city streets. Leighton has finished on the podium several times in his Trans-Am Series Corvettes and Pontiacs including podium runs at Vancouver, Western Michigan, Minneapolis and 2nd place finishes at venues like Detroit, Houston and a Casino parking lot in Reno Nevada.

Saying that, Leighton was quick to point out that since street tracks are lined with concrete barriers which lurk perilously close to the racing action and finish can often be a good finish on these types of race tracks and the St. Petersburg layout is anything but typical for street tracks.

"This is a really, really fast race track as street courses go," Leighton said with a big smile. "There are 15 degree turns in the middle of long straights here that are a lot like the Kink at Road America except of course for that there is concrete right along both sides of the track!"