American Le Mans Series

Maassen Wins First LMP2 Race

Sascha Maassen enjoyed a near-perfect race weekend, as he led the charge in the American Le Mans Series debut of the new Penske Porsche RS Spyder.

Maassen, of Raeren, Belgium, took the LMP2 class pole position with a record lap time of one minute 15.606 seconds on the 2.238-mile Laguna Seca Raceway road course in Monterey, Calif. He started the four-hour race from the class pole and fifth overall. He held the class lead and raced as high as second overall during his two-hour 51-minute stint, and also logged the fastest LMP2 lap of the race, a record 1:17.136. Maassen then handed off to Lucas Luhr of Monaco, who maintained the pace for an eight-lap class margin of victory.

“We had a great qualifying, a great race, a great weekend. I’m really impressed with everything the car, the team, everything worked perfectly. I was waiting for the moment when something goes wrong, but it didn’t,” Maassen said.

He noted only one small problem during the race: “Our windshield was getting dirty, so I couldn’t look through it when the sun was setting. I had to look over it and I was stretching my head for half an hour. But this is the only problem we had and I think we can solve that. Now we’re going to test more and make the car even quicker, hopefully.”