American Le Mans Series

Petit Le Mans - Hour 5: Halfway there!

© Planetlemans

The fifth hour of the Petit Le Mans American Le Mans Series race did not have as much action as the previous hours. The Audi’s R10 in the hands of McNish and Pirro were still in the lead, but after a pit stop that did not go as planned Andy Wallace was able to close in on the Audi’s. The European teams were battling each other for fourth place.

The #15 Zytek did overtake the #88 Creation after four and a half hours but had to get into the pit lane for fuel handing back the position to Creation. When the pit stop went wrong the Zytek team lost even more time. The last LMP1 car in the race, the #9 Highcroft Lola was in sixth place at the half-way point.
In LMP2 Emmanuel Collard was literally flying in the #6 Porsche RS Spyder, still behind the Intersport Racing Lola he took seconds per lap off the lead. A downshift problem for the Intersport Lola caused even more headache at the team. The Horag-Lista entry was in third place for a long time, but towards then half-way point of the race the #7 Porsche RS Spyder closed the gap. B-K Motorsports` Courage is far behind the other LMP2 cars.

Aston Martin Racing was still in the lead in GT1. The #009 DBR9 was still a lap ahead of the #4 Corvette after 5 hours. Behind the Corvette it was the #007 Aston Martin, albeit half a lap down. The Aston Martin was followed by the #3 Corvette.

In GT2 it was still the #23 Alex Job Racing leading. The #61 Risi Competizione Ferrari was 16 seconds behind at the half-way point with the #51 Multimatic Panoz running in third place.

Despite having a lot of problems during the first part of the race the #31 Petersen-White Lightning Porsche was in fourth place just 16 seconds outside a provisional podium finish. Further behind where the troubled #50 Panoz, as well as the PTG BMW’s and the even more unlucky Flying Lizard Porsches.

At the five hour mark the #22 PTG BMW, which was (once again?) parked at the side of the track, came back on the track and drove into the pit lane. After a refuelling in the pit, it was put behind the wall.