DETROIT — It’s hard to keep a good man down, especially when he’s on a mission. And in Saturday’s 10th round of the 2007 American Le Mans Series, Romain Dumas was on a mission.
What Dumas was after was an eighth-straight overall victory for the Penske Racing LMP2 Porsche RS Spyder team. However, with a little more than three minutes to go, that goal seemed almost out of reach, for ahead of him was the Audi R10 diesel LMP1 entry of Marco Werner and Emanuele Pirro.
The latter had gotten in front of Dumas by out dragging him on a late-race restart, using the power of the turbocharged V-12 diesel to pull ahead just enough to keep the more nimble Porsche at bay.
In fact, most believed that neither Pirro nor Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello in the second Audi R10 had any chance at all on the temporary Belle Isle street circuit with its bumps and abrupt changes in surface camber. However, it wasn’t all that good a day for the contenders in the LMP2 division, even though it was an all-Penske Porsche front row.
Marino Franchitti again had electrical problems in the Andretti Green Acura ARX-01a he was sharing with Bryan Herta, the pair finishing 19th overall, while Luis Diaz and Adrian Fernandez had their own share of mechanical issues in their Acura-powered Lola before recovering to finish sixth.
Even so, the real focus of ill fortune focused in on the Penske Porsche of Ryan Briscoe and Sascha Maassen. Their troubles began when Briscoe got entangled with the GT2 point-leading Risi Competizione Ferrari 430GT Mika Salo was sharing with Jaime Melo. That cost Briscoe a stop-and-go penalty and the subsequent loss of a lap, which through clever pit strategy, he was able to make up.
Then it was Maassen’s turn. He found himself a lap in arrears after the refueling halt in which he took over the Penske entry. As he worked his way back, he and Stefan Johansson in the Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-0a that had been started by David Brabham, and in which Brabham himself had two incidents with rival cars in which he tore off broth front-side spoilers, touched.
This time it was a little more serious, for while Johansson was able to continue, Maassen was forced into the pits, but not before his rear wing fell off along the way. That not only led to a ninth overall finish for the Porsche, but the full-course yellow, which ended with Pirro grabbing the lead from Dumas.
The Audi team, which felt that luck and circumstances had cheated them out of outright victories at both Road America and Mosport, wanted the lead and the win at Belle Isle badly, as they tried to end the Penske team’s overall winning streak at seven. Indeed the second R10, with Capello aboard that had been lagging just a bit, pushed through the traffic to move closer to the rear of Dumas’ RS Spyder.
It remained essentially a two-man show was Dumas used traffic to track down as Pirro and, in a bump-and-run maneuver, pass him with a little more than two laps left. Even so, Pirro didn’t completely give up, finishing less than half a second back, with Capello third and Butch Leitzinger, partnered with Andy Wallace in the Dyson Racing RS Spyder, fourth. Taking fifth overall and third in LMP2 were Johansson and Brabham.
The results by the Penske and Dyson Porsches ensured the German manufacturer of its second straight LHP2 championship with just Road Atlanta’s Petit Le Mans and the series’s Laguna finale to go.
In GT2, Salo and Melo, despite their brush with Briscoe, were the winners over the Flying Lizard Porsche GT3RSR of Patrick Long and Darren Law, with the Dirk Mueller-Peter Dumbreck Petersen/White Lightning 430GT third. The performance by Salo and Melo, coupled with the flash fire that eliminated the Flying Lizard Porsche of Johannes van Overbeek and Jorg Bergmeister, virtually assured the Ferrari winners of the GT2 class title, although the manufacturers’s honors in the division remain up for grabs.
Finally, in GT1, it was Johnny O’Connell and Jan Magnussen winning for the second straight weekend over their Corvette teammates, Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta.
 — Bill Oursler