TA: Full circle - Lynx prepare to say goodbye.

It will be the end of an era when the chequered flag falls on the final Toyota Atlantic race of the season this weekend when the Lynx Racing team completes its final race.

Owned by two women, Peggy Haas and Jackie Doty, Lynx Racing is the most successful, championship-winning combination of racing team and driver development program in the 31-year history of the Toyota Atlantic series. Over the past 14 years, drivers, including Buddy Rice, Patrick Carpentier and Memo Gidley, have started from pole 32 times, scored 37 victories, finished on the podium 41 times and claimed two Toyota Atlantic championships.

Carrying the distinctive Lynx logo on their cars for the final time this weekend will be Bryan Sellers and his teammate Josh Hunt.

Sellers has started from the front row twice, finished on the podium three times and scored six top-five finishes so far in the 2004 Toyota Atlantic season, and is currently sixth in the championship.

"To tell the truth, I haven't even thought about this being the last race for the team," he said. "We're completely focused on producing the best possible results, just like always. I'm sure that after the chequered flag drops, the emotions I'm keeping locked in the back of my head will all come tumbling out. I just know that I'm proud to be a part of this team, and while Lynx Racing may fade into history, what I and a lot of other young drivers learned here will be a part of us for the rest of our lives."

Hunt jumped into Atlantic racing full-time at the start of the 2004 season with backing from Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven and the Wright Patterson Shakespeare financial group. With just four car races and a few days of testing under his belt, he was on a steep learning curve, but began to impress observers almost immediately with his speed and development as a driver. In a difficult season, he has finished consistently in the top-ten and he admits that he has benefited from being part of the Lynx team.

"It's the nature of a racing driver to assume he can go into any new series and start kicking butt immediately, but this year has been a real education for me," he said. "The competition is fierce, there's very little testing so it's almost impossible for a rookie to find the right setup for the car, and the tracks are all vastly different from each other.

"I thank my lucky stars I wound up with a team like Lynx that had both the knowledge and the strength to help me go from totally green rookie to a place where I feel like I've got my feet on the ground and am ready to move forward from here."

From its humble beginnings during a conversation between friends on the turn 2 hillside at Laguna Seca back in 1990, and a single leased car towed on a trailer behind a van, the Lynx mission has always been to seek out young drivers with the desire and potential to become champions.

From there, the aim has always been to provide them with the funding, equipment and training - both mental and physical - to realise that potential; a process the team calls 'Destiny by Design.' The team has always been self-funded by its owners, its 2-year 'Road Scholarship' in the Toyota Atlantic series worth $2.5 million in recent years.

Jackie Doty admits that having lived the dream for so long, she will be sad to see the chequered flag fall for the final time.

"I spent the first thirty years of my life wanting to get into auto racing, and the next seventeen years living that dream, both as a driver and team owner," she said. "I have mixed feelings about the end of Lynx Racing, but I'm glad at least that it's come full circle and is ending where it began.

"And I'm just delighted, thinking about the struggle of the first few years, that we'll be celebrating the final race with brie and champagne in the Lynx hospitality tent right on the start/finish line. We've come a long way, helped a lot of people and had a good ride. I know what I'll miss most are the exceptional people, both drivers and crew, who have been a part of Lynx Racing."

Heading into this final event, Lynx Racing has scored three poles, three wins, three podium finishes and three top-five finishes in the Laguna Seca Atlantic race. With the circuit also being the place where Alex Barron claimed the teams second title back in 1997, it is a place that will always play a key role in the teams history.

For Peggy Haas, it will be a place full of memories.

"Laguna Seca has always been Lynx Racing's home track, and we've had some wonderful memories here," she said. "The payoff for Jackie and I has always been that moment when what we were trying to teach a driver finally sunk in and you could see that light bulb go on over their head. In that instant when they finally 'got it,' you could see their future unfolding in their eyes, and watch as they took the first mental step down a new road.

"Winning races and championships is important and thrilling, but Lynx Racing's purpose right from the start was to bring as many young drivers as possible to that moment when they come into their own power and take charge of their destiny."

Although Lynx Racing will disappear from the scene, Cameron Motorsports - the organisation that fielded the Lynx effort - will continue.

The team hopes to continue to field an Atlantic program for promising drivers with sufficient funding, but is also exploring opportunities in the Grand American Road Racing Daytona Prototypes category.

Team manager, and ex-Atlantic star, Steve Cameron admits that there will be a huge hole left in the Toyota Atlantic series next season when Lynx are missing from the grid.

"The end of Lynx Racing is going to leave a huge hole in the motorsports landscape, and in the hearts of a lot of people," he said. "This program started small but grew into something special, into a part of the racing culture; ask any young driver on the way up and they'll tell you they dream of being a Lynx driver someday.

"The greatest satisfaction the Lynx Racing program gave me was the opportunity to pick the top young drivers on their merits rather than their money, and then help them to grow and develop into stars of the sport. It's something I've always wanted to do, that I enjoy and that I'm good at. I really want to thank Peggy and Jackie for giving me the chance to do that for the past eleven years."