American Le Mans Series

Wednesday Petit Le Mans Testing Summary

JJ Lehto and Marco Werner picked up where they left off in the spring, posting the fastest time at Road Atlanta during testing for Petit Le Mans, Round 9 of the American Le Mans Series. The No. 1 Champion Racing Audi R8 turned a lap of 1:12.650, more than 0.7 seconds better than the No. 20 Dyson Racing Lola of Chris Dyson and Guy Smith.

Lehto and Werner, who posted the session’s fast time, won April’s Grand Prix of Atlanta and are the defending Petit Le Mans champions. Lehto also won Petit Le Mans in 2003 with Johnny Herbert.

“I definitely want to win my third consecutive Petit Le Mans as no one has done it before,” Lehto said. “Also, it would be nice to win the three most important sports car races in the world: 12 Hours of Sebring, 24 Hours of Le Mans, and Petit Le Mans.”

Third-quickest Wednesday was the LMP1 championship leading No. 2 Audi R8 pairing of Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro at 1:13.623.

In LMP2, the No. 37 Intersport Racing Lola set the pace. Jon Field, who’s partnering with son Clint and Liz Halliday this weekend, posted a time of 1:14.528. Like Lehto and Werner, the Fields teamed to win at Road Atlanta in the spring.

Next was the No. 27 Horag-Lista Racing Lola of Eric van de Poele, Didier Theys and Thed Bjork at 1:18.088. Things weren’t all rosy, though, as van de Poele collided with the No. 57 Aston Martin DBR9 being driven by Jonny Kane.

The two cars came together near pit-out. The Lola was damaged considerably as was the Aston Martin, which suffered an oil leak on top of things. The session was red-flagged for about 30 minutes to clean up the cars, debris and oil from Turn 2 through the esses and into Turn 5.

Third fastest in P2 was Barazi Kruse Motorsport’s Courage C65 of Phil Bennett, Juan Barazi and Elton Julian at 1:18.985.

It didn’t take long for the Corvette Racing-Aston Martin Racing rivalry to get back on track. The GT1 championship-leading No. 4 Corvette C6-R of Olivier Beretta, Oliver Gavin and Jan Magnussen set the pace with a 1:18.560. That was less than 0.2 seconds better than the No. 58 Aston Martin DBR9 of Peter Kox, Pedro Lamy and Tomas Enge.

Third was the No. 35 Maserati Corse MC12 of Andrea Bertolini, Fabio Babini and Fabrizio de Simone.

The championship leaders also were quickest in GT2 as the No. 31 Petersen Motorsports/White Lightning Racing Porsche turned a lap of 1:23.078. Patrick Long and Jorg Bergmeister, who are driving this week with Craig Stanton, lead the class championship by 12 points over Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas of Alex Job Racing.

Speaking of Bernhard and Dumas, they were close behind Petersen/White Lighting with a 1:23.154. Next was the No. 51 Panoz Motor Sports Panoz Esperante GTLM of Bryan Sellers, Gunnar Jeannette and Marino Franchitti.

Three cars did not make practice runs: the No. 15 Zytek 04S, the No. 7 BAT Competition Lola and Carsport America’s No. 71 Viper.