De Ferran Wins Three in a Row

Simon Pagenaud set the pole and finished the race, earning de Ferran Racing its third win of the season. (American Le Mans Series)

Marino Franchitti and Butch Leitzinger scored Dyson Racing's first class win in the #20 Lola Mazda. (Dyson Racing)

The Flying Lizard Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Long won in GT2. (Jeff Yeh/The Epoch Times)

American Le Mans showed why it remains the most popular sports-racing series in America year after year, with an epic battle at the American Le Mans Northeast Grand Prix Lime Rock Park that featured amazing technology, scary speed, non-stop competition and racing drama for the entire length of the 2-hour, forty-five-minute event.

The LMP1 Acura of Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud started from the pole, swapped the lead with the Highcroft Patrón Acura, fought through traffic, and eventually took the win after accidents, incidents, off-road excursions and non-stop excitement.

This was de Ferran Racing’s third straight overall victory in the American Le Mans Series.

“The car was great,” said Simon Pagenaud after he stepped out of the car. “I am happy for the team. It’s our third win in a row, and I hope we can keep going.”

In LMP2, the Dyson Racing team proved that they made good use of the layoff since the last race, as Butch Leitzinger and Marino Franchitti piloted the #20 Lola-Mazda to its first class win.

Dyson driver Butch Leitzinger was thrilled to win the team’s first class victory on their home track, just a few miles down the road from the Dyson shop.

“Everything seemed to work for us today. We’ve had enough times when everything went against us so this is little bit of payback,” he said. “It came at the right place and the right time.” 

The Flying Lizard Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Long won a race-long battle over the Rizi Competizione Ferrari 430 to win in GT2.

“Patrick did a great job qualifying the car,” Jörg Bergmeister said after the race. “We made a change in the differential before the warm-up, and the car was just hooked up in the race. Great effort by the team. It’s hopefully going to go on like this.”

In Challenge Cup, pole-sitters Wes Hoaglund and Bob Faieta inherited the lead when Martin Snow crashed on lap 142, and went on to win their first class victory.

Hybrid Power Comes to ALMS

The Corsa Racing Ginetta-Zytek 09HS Hybrid finally got its chance to run a race with its Kinetic Energy Recapture System (KERS) active. The Corsa car has a regular gasoline/alcohol engine augmented by a KERS system which recharges a large lithium battery, which in turn powers a electric motor which augments the internal combustion engine.

The KERS system uses the mechanical forces of braking to charge the battery: the energy usually lost in braking is instead used to power the car. Unlike the KERS system used in some Formula One cars, where the KERS unit is charged and discharged in bursts to jolt the car forward, the ACO-homologated version used in ALMS provides power depending on the degree of throttle input, delivering its power when the driver steps hard on the gas. Unlike the F1 “Push-to-Pass” model, the ALMS version lightens the load on the main power plant, saving fuel and improving endurance.

Driver Johnny Mowlem admitted that there were still a lot of bugs to be worked out with the system. The drag on the rear wheels made it difficult to adjust the brake bias, and the unit was still too heavy, making it hard to balance the car. Still, he and co-driver Stefan Johannson managed a podium finish in their first race with the KERS active. Team owner Steve Pruit said, “It is unbelievable. I still can't believe that we made it to the podium. Johnny and Stefan both did a great job in the car today.”

Lime Rock: Short, Fast, Crowded

Scott Sharp in the P1 Acura leads Luis Diaz in the P2 Acura, the two Dyson cars, the Radical SR9, and the Intersport Lola in the forst half of the Lime Rock ALMS race. (Patrón Highcroft Racing)

David Brabham in the Patrón Highcroft Acura passes the Patron Challenge Class Porsche. (Patrón Highcroft Racing)

Lime Rock Park is a short, tight track with no real straightaways, but plenty of quick corners. With the track being only 1.5 miles long, lap times for the fastest cars are in the 45–55 second range. The leaders start catching lapped traffic in two or three laps. This makes for huge excitement, particularly in ALMS, where four different classes of cars, with four dramatically different performance profiles and speed ranges race simultaneously.

Surprisingly, for so many cars going so fast in so little space, the race only saw one full-course, caution, when John Baker ran the Challenge Cup Porsche he shared with Guy Cosmo, into the tire barrier at the first chicane, crushing the radiator and leaving fluids all over the track. While there was plenty of incidental contact, and a few spins, the drivers managed to avoid serious collisions.

The race started late as Scott Sharp, in the Highcroft Patrón Acura, got a little overeager and hit the gas before the green flag. On the restart, Gil de Ferran pulled out a considerable lead, and the race looked like it might be a runaway. By lap 13, de Ferran had a twelve second advantage, by lap 44, it was fourteen seconds. Then Scott Sharp started to reel him in.

This follows Sharp’s usual pattern; he starts slow, conserves his tires, feels out the car and the competition, and then starts running hard. By lap sixty, the gap was under two seconds and Sharp was driving hard.

About 45 minutes into the race, de Ferran accidentally hit his pit straight speed limiter while entering tight, uphill Turn Five. His speed dropped by half, instantly, and one of the Dyson Lola Mazdas hit him from behind, breaking his rear diffuser.

As de Ferran later described it, “I got crossed up going into Turn Five and pressed the pit lane speed limiter by mistake. I have to apologize for that. It damaged the bodywork on the right rear and made the car a little more difficult to drive; a little more oversteer, particularly under braking.” This might account for some of Sharp’s sudden improvement.

After pit stops and driver changes, Simon Pagenaud battled David Brabham. The two had raced Peugeots at Le Mans in June, and were back at in at Lime Rock in July.

The pair traded fastest race laps half a dozen times, while the gap between them accordioned from a few seconds to half a second as they picked their ways through traffic.

With about 40 minutes left in the race, Brabham got bumped by the GT2 Panoz while trying to pass the slower car. The impact cracked the left front fender and blew out the fender-top louvers. After the accident, the in-car camera showed when Brabham was going fast, the air pressure would lift the entire front fender almost off the rest of the body. This cost Brabham some downforce, and threatened to cause quite an accident if the body broke up at speed.

A few laps later, on lap 142, Pagenaud pitted for fuel. Brabham tried his best to put the other Acura a lap down, but Pagenaud rejoined the race just ahead of him. Taking advantage of a lighter car while Pagenaud had a full fuel load and cold tires, Brabham passed Pagenaud for the lead.

Brabham planned to pit on lap 144, so he tried to stretch his klead as long as possible. He pushed too hard entering Turn Five and went off the track, but didn’t slow at all.

He pitted, and his crew gave him just enough fuel to finish the race and only two left-side tires, to make his stop shorter.

Simon Pagenaud chases David Brabham in the final minutes of the race. (Patrón Highcroft Racing)

Brabham rejoined the race just ahead of Pagenaud, this time, while over the radio hit pit crew yelled, “Push hard, push hard now! Here he comes! Go, go, go!”

Brabham went, staying just ahead of Pagenaud despite his cold tires. Then, entering Turn Five, Pagenaud tried too hard and briefly lost control, skidding through the traffic cones marking the escape road.

With thirty minutes left in the race, Brabham had the lead. Both cars had body damage which hurt them aerodynamically; besides the rear diffuser being broken, Pagenaud had a traffic cone wedged into the air vent behind the left front fender, interfering with the airflow over the front diffuser.

Battle of the Damaged Titans

David Brabham drove with tremendous intensity but couldn't make up for the blown tire. (Jeff Yeh/The Epoch Times)

Both Acura drivers were going all-out. Brabham, usually very controlled and smooth, made an excellent show of kamikaze driving, forcing his car through every tiny hole in traffic. His front fender was getting worse, and Pagenaud was just as fast and driving just as hard. Brabham had no choice but to go even harder.

Suddenly, with only fourteen minutes left in the race and Brabham ahead by six seconds, Brabham’s left rear tire violently blew out in the fastest corner of the track while Brabham was accelerating at 130 mph, almost throwing the car off the road. Brabham saved it, and wheeled the car around to the pits, but by the time he got a new tire and rejoined the race, he was almost an entire lap down.

If Brabham had been driving aggressively before, he was positively ruthless now, trying to catch up to Pagenaud again. Brabham was lapping nine-tenths of a second faster, slashing through traffic, but there just wasn’t enough time.

Pagenaud shepherded his increasingly ill-handling car around the track swiftly and safely, knowing that if he didn’t make a mistake he would take the win.

Pagenaud didn’t make a mistake; he kept in together and brought it home, earning de Ferran Racing their third win in a row, and pulling the team to within thirteen pints of the leading duo of Sharp and Brabham.

After the race Pagenaud said he had been hoping Brabham would have some sort of incident, because, “I honestly didn’t have pace to come back on him.”

Pagenaud said that maneuvering through all the traffic was extremely stressful. “I am going to remember this race forever. I think my heart rate was at maximum all race. These kinds of situations will make you stronger.”

Team owner and co-driver Gil de Ferran also commented on the traffic. “The difference in speed between us and the GT3 cars, especially at the end of the straights, it seems like warp speed, and then you are right there with their taillights in your face. It was pretty hairy.

“I am quite happy about the evolution of the team. We had a little good fortune today. But it was good. We had a good race.”