by Ryan ZumMallen | Sports Book | 04.17.11
Photos by Ryan ZumMallen
Muscle Milk Motorsports teammates Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf piloted their Aston Martin prototype coupe to a P1 class and overall victory, in the American Le Mans Series race that highlighted Saturday afternoon at the 37th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.
RIGHT:
Graf is congratulated by competitors after winning the ALMS race in Long Beach.The two-hour
race featured plenty of excitement (read: crashing), as five classes of sports cars battled simultaneously on the relatively small Long Beach street circuit. The race ended under caution when two competing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars collided on the back straightaway. With the yellow flag out for the final three laps, all Graf had to do was walk the big V12-engined beast across the finish line for the win.
Muscle Milk started the race from second position after the Mazda prototype of Dyson Racing won pole position with the fastest lap during qualifying on Friday. But come race day, the Aston Martin was dialed in and Luhr found room on Turn 5 for a daring pass that would put Muscle Milk in the lead for good.
“I had the plan in my head to get around Chris [Dyson] in the first corner but he did a good job staying ahead,” Luhr said. “But I could see I was quicker and made my move a few turns later.”
The Muscle Milk and Dyson Racing cars were the only two competing in the top-flight LMP1 class. Several similar, but lighter and less powerful, LMP2 and LMPC cars put up a good fight but never really challenged for the lead.
One of the cars that could have put up a valiant fight, the Lola-Honda coupe (pictured right) of Level 5 Motorsports, elected to end their race early after just 45 laps out of the total 83. The team begins preparation for this June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans next week and did not want to risk damage. Pity, because drivers Scott Tucker and Christophe Bouchut were clearly not running the car to its full capability, and could well have bothered Dyson and Muscle Milk. “We’re running Le Mans and going to the Test Day next Sunday,” said Tucker, team owner. “One of our goals here was bringing the coupe, which is leaving in two hours. We decided this was the best thing to do in the overall picture.”
The Level 5 coupe is an LMP2 car and won the class anyway.
It was a different story in the always-competitive GT class, however. The production-based racecars include such storied marques as BMW, Ferrari, Chevrolet, Porsche and more, which are basically showroom cars converted into racing machines. The Flying Lizard racing team and their Porsche 911 GT3R had won the last two ALMS races at Long Beach, but they were not due for a three-peat on Saturday.
Instead it was the hard-charging BMW M3 GT (picture right) of Joey Hand and Dirk Mueller, winning from pole position and handing the Rahal RLL team its third win out of three races this season. It was the second consecutive win for Hand and Mueller.Hand had a rough time of it in the early going. He, Patrick Long of Flying Lizard and Oliver Gavin of Corvette Racing were locked in a carousel of taking and relinquishing the GT class lead. On Lap 31, the three were battling near Turn 9 when Long made contact with the wall, forcing his Porsche to retire and creating an opportunity for Hand.
“If you don’t like ALMS GT racing, you don’t like racing,” said Hand, a California native who said he grew up playing the Long Beach street circuit on video games. “If I was a spectator, I’d love to see what is going on out there. At one point I was in third and Long was going to the inside of Gavin into a turn and I was thinking, ‘This isn’t going to work out for them.’ I race to put on a show for people watching at home, and I think that’s what we all did.”
Even when they weren’t locked in a positional deathmatch, there was plenty in the ALMS race for fans to enjoy. Such wildly different types of cars created a field that looked and sounded very diverse. Faster LMP1 and LMPC cars rocketed around clusters of guttural GT cars doing their own tango. Even the non-competitive GT cars like the Jaguar XKR and Lamborghini LP560-4 were crowd favorites for their style. And the noise. The noise! From the Aston Martin’s downright angelic V12 note to the shriek of the Ferrari F458 Italia and the ear-pounding Corvette ZR1 V8, wearing earplugs during the ALMS should have been a punishable offense.
I mean, how do you say no to a sound like this?
Here is a collection of more photos from the ALMS race on Saturday from myself and photographers Nate Toering and Dale Brown.
Photo by Nate Toering
Photo by Nate Toering
Photo by Nate Toering
Photo by Nate Toering
Photo by Nate Toering
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
Photo by Dale Brown
No comments:
Post a Comment