The American Le Mans series had the spotlight all to themselves this weekend at Road America. All be it a rather dry and boring season, we had some hope with the GT2 class and a potential surprise in LMP 2 to look forward to.
Highcroft Racing was able to take the victory and end a rather impressive streak for opposing Acura team De Ferran Racing. An early caution stop for De Ferran let the Highcroft machine charge ahead. Through the natural cycle of stops an dcautions however, both Acura P1 teams got back onto the same strategy and would do battle before the day was over. Fast forward to the six minute to go mark and the teams would be taking the green flag. The two Acuras were nose to tail and De Ferran would make the Highcroft team earn the victory providing constant pressure for David Brabham. The P1 victory would extend the Highcroft points lead.
Adrain Fernandez Racing was able to capture victory in the P2 class over a suprising Dyson Mazda that looked very quick early on. Some bad strategy on the part of the Mazda team would see them loose out big but still finish a close and much needed second place. The suprise we thought we may have never came to be as the Cytosport Porsche would finish third. Fernandez Racing has owned the P2 class all year long but a resurgent Porsche emerged last weekend as a potential spoiler for this weeks race.
Now we can get to the good stuff! The GT2 class offered a huge suprise this weekend when Rahal Letterman Racing and their brand new M3s would take a most convincing victory. After taking pole position for the class, Joey Hand and Bill Auberlen were able to get a one lap advantage over the entire GT2 class due to the timing of the first caution flag. When it fell the first time, the P1 teams had just put a lap on the rest of the GT class and the BMW teams were able to walk off with their first win since reentering the ALMS series. With the shocking 1/2, the Corvette team were able to follow up an impressive GT2 debut with yet another podium. The O’Connell Corvette would prove to be the better of the two and was able to hold off the Flying Lizard Porsche. So now you are probably going to ask/harass me about the Risi 430. They finished one spot behind the Flying Lizard in typical off again fashion.
Well, I suspected that O’Connell would really be able to hustle that Corvette around Road America very well. What I didn’t expect was the outstanding performance by BMW. Rahal’s team really hit the set-up on the head and they had an outstanding weekend. …oh and yeah, your 430GT performed exactly as I expected it to. 😉