American Le Mans Series

Petit Le Mans - Hour 7: The drama continues

© Planetlemans

Into the seventh hour and with just over 250 laps done the battle in LMP2 continued. The Intersport Racing was still ahead of the Penske Motorsport Porsche.

Marcel Tiemann touched the wall in the leading Alex Job Porsche and had to return to the pitlane. The car suffered a damaged suspension and lost the lead while being in the pit lane. Bergmeister in Petersen-White Lightning Porsche took the lead and Maurizio Mediani in the Risi Ferrari 430 took second place.
After the pit stops, this time not under a full course yellow, it was the Zytek driven by Stefan Johansson, in the lead. The two Audi’s were about 30 seconds behind with Minassian in fourth over 1 lap behind Werner. Didier Theys had to bring in the Horag-Lista car to the pit lane for a 30 seconds penalty after 6 hours and 20 minutes of racing. Despite the penalty the team was still far ahead of the B-K Motorsports Courage and far behind the top 3 in the LMP2 class.

After 270 laps just when Jon Field came into the pit lane to hand over the steering wheel to Clint Field, it was the leading Zytek which suffered a blown tyre. The tyre flew off when one of the Audi’s passed the Zytek but the car and tyre missed the Audi. The pit stop that followed for Zytek was a drama. At first the wheel did not come off and then the bonnet was taken off after the car was standing still for a while. After a quick check for overheating or a leak the bonnet was put back on and the car was sent out again. In the meantime Minassian in the Creation had taken over third place; Johansson rejoined the race in fourth.

The Petersen-White Lightning Porsche stopped a bit longer then expected when the team had to remove several lumps of rubber from the wheel bay before the front wheel could be fitted on. When Patrick Long, who took over from Bergmeister, got out of the pit lane he was still in the lead though.

The battle in GT1 between the #007 Aston Martin and the #3 Corvette started over again and at the same place there was contact over an hour ago, both cars touched again. Both stayed on the track this time by.

With 100 laps left in the race, the sun was about to set and circumstances were getting worse.