For the second year in a row, the battle for the Cooper Tires Presents The Atlantic Championship Powered by Mazda title will go down to the final race of the season. Jonathan Summerton leapfrogged John to take second in the championship standings behind leader de Silvestro following his fourth victory of the season on Friday afternoon at Road Atlanta. It was Summerton’s third victory in his last four Atlantic starts.  “We were very, very quick in all the practices and qualified on pole and won the race. I think we’re in for a good run at Laguna Seca. I hope John will be there also with us up there strong. Basically, I can only do what I can do and focus on winning races. The rest is out there. We’re going for a championship and I know it can be done. The way the car has been the last three or four races, I can’t complain. I know we’re going to have a strong car in Laguna. Hopefully, we can do it in dominating fashion again there.”

After seeing her streak of podium finishes snapped at eight consecutive races due to a crash at Mosport, De Silvestro returned to the podium for the ninth time in 11 races with her runner-up result in the No. 78 Stargate Worlds/Maakoa/Cheyenne Mountain Games/FireSky/Cardinal Technologies entry for Team Stargate Worlds. “We had a really good podium streak before the big crash in Mosport,” De Silvestro said. “It was a little bit unfortunate that I had that. I’m really happy to be back here on the podium. It’s really important for me for the championship to be back up front. In the race, I knew I had to get a really good start, so I really focused on that and it happened, so I was really happy. Just from then on, Summerton had a little bit faster car than we had. A really big thanks to my whole team for putting the car together. It was really important to get back on the podium for the points.”

 John settled for third scoring his eighth podium result of the season. It is important to point out, however, that the driver who was third in the championship standings following the penultimate round – Markus Niemela – wound up taking the series title when all was said and done in the season finale, so John is very much alive in the title chase.  “I got a bad start, and that’s really where the race was lost,” Edwards said. “I had a couple of chances where I was drafting Simona, but I never really got close enough until about two laps from the end. That was the lap that Tonis (Kasemets) decided to spin or something in the chicane, so his car was stalled and there was a yellow flag. I went to pop on Simona, I popped out and had a run, but unfortunately the yellow flag didn’t allow me to complete the pass. That was unfortunate, but the reality is that I gave the position to her at the start and that ruined my race.”