American Le Mans Series

Grand Prix of Mosport - Penske Wins Again!

© American Le Mans Series

The Grand Prix of Mosport went into its final hour and things seemed to have calmed down. With pit stops still to be made by several teams and none of the teams willing to risk anything unnecessary at this point of the race the positions remained almost unchanged.

Unfortunately for the Lowe’s Fernandez Racing team things went wrong. Adrian Fernandez hit the Autocon Creation, taking off a part of the rear wing. The part got stuck on the front win of the Lola. While the team was focussing on that problem the Dyson Racing Porsche in the hands of Guy Smith closed the gap and started to fight for position.
The battle went on for minutes but ended when Fernandez got stuck between the Autocon Creation (again) and a rapidly approaching Guy Smith. As Fernandez lost some speed it was the Dyson Porsche that got ahead of the Lola. Fernandez went into the pit for fresh tyres and fuel and to get the debris from the Creation off his car. Taking off the part turned out to be a bit harder and it took three crewmembers to finally get rid of it. Valuable time was lost.

As there were just over 35 minutes remaining it was Timo Bernhard leading the race in his LMP2 Porsche Spyder. The German had however only made one pitstop and was about to come in. When he did bring the yellow Porsche in to the box for fuel and tyres Allan McNish was there to inherit the lead again. Minutes later McNish’s team mate Marco Werner got into the box as well.

The Penske Porsches were not willing to give up that easily and stormed out. Bernhard and Briscoe went after Herta and when the American was briefly hampered by the PWL Ferrari the Porsches attacked. Briscoe, Bernhard and Herta went wheel to wheel and used the whole track, unfortunately for Briscoe he lost the battle and had to get into the box for a new wheel. Two minutes later Herta also came in for a pit stop.

Just 14 minutes remained in the race when McNish came sliding through a turn followed by radio comments from the team to McNish regarding a gearbox problem. McNish was told to nurse the car home, but with ’just’ 25 seconds over the second place Porsche the Scot would not have a very relaxing final of the race.

McNish tried everything and seemed to have solved the problem when he set a 1:09. Only moments later the Scot came on the radio to notify the team that the gear was now stuck in third or fourth. With four minutes to go it was Timo Bernhard getting ahead of McNish who lost a lot of speed.

As Bernhard went on to increase his unexpected lead it was Ryan Briscoe that was the next to fight with McNish. The Australian driver used all the road to get ahead but for some reason he dropped back.

Timo Bernhard crossed the line in first place, ahead of Allan McNish. Eleven seconds behind McNish it was Briscoe, who set a final lap time of 1:23. Fourth overall was the second Audi. Andretti-Green Racing was fifth and B-K sixth, fourth in LMP2!

The number 3 Corvette won GT1, while the Melo/Salo Risi Competizione was again the best in GT2.

_{Marcel ten Caat - Planetlemans.com}