American Le Mans Series

Petit Le Mans underway - Hour 1 report

© Audi Motorsport

The Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta has started at 17:45 CET without any major problems. After the warmup laps Minassian came on the throttle too early and instead of a green flag there were yellow flags being waved. After the cars were nicely lined up the next time by the green flag was given and the ninth annual running of Petit Le Mans was underway.
Minassian immediately pulled away in the Creation, but was closely followed by Johansson in the Zytek. The rest of the field was just behind them with the Audi’s leading the group.

After only a few laps the Radical SR9, with Ben Devlin at the wheel came into the pitlane for an unscheduled pitstop. The car which suffered a suspected misfire returned to the track but unfortunately had to come back in and disappeared behind the pitwall. The exact problem is yet to be confirmed.

On track the Prototypes started overtaking the slower GT cars and not without problems. Nic Minassian passed the Petersen-White Lightning Porsche easily but it was the Zytek that touched the 996 GT3 RSR causing it to spin. The cars behind it, in particular the Porsche Spyders and the Dyson Lola only just avoided it.

After 30 minutes of racing it was the number 61 Ferrari 430 GT that spun off into the gravel after Mediani lost the control of the car at turn 10. The car had to be towed from the graveltrap causing the first full course yellow of the day.

The moment the pitlane opened most cars came into the pit, Creation had a problem with the left rear wheel during the pitstop and the delay handed over the race lead to Marco Werner in the Audi R10.

45 minutes into the race the restart was given and almost immediately Darren Turner in the Aston Martin DBR9 went wide, but got back on the track without damaging anything.

The second full course caution of the day came out when the Intersport Lola hit the Highcroft Lola and parts of the Highcroft car flew into the air. The debri was collected by the Zytek, but without any consequences. Only a few turns later the Highcroft car was beached on the curbstones.

After one hour of racing it was Marco Werner leading the race and LMP1 class in the Audi R10. Lucas Luhr in the Porsche RS Spyder leads LMP2. Stephane Sarrazin is leading the GT1 class, but the other GT1 cars are nearby with positions changing all the time. The GT2 category lead is in the hands of Marc Lieb in a Porsche.