LONG BEACH, Calif. — What a difference 12 months can make. The LMP2 prototypes dominated the action during the 2007 American Le Mans Series event at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, while the LMP1 Audis struggled.
But this past Saturday was a different story, with the Audis prevailing on a course where few expected them to, while the best the LMP2 set could do was the third-place posted by David Brabham and Scott Sharp in the Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-01b, the first LMP2 triumph for Highcroft Acura, and the first for the Japanese car maker since the Andretti-Green team pulled off the trick at Sebring in 2007.
Claiming first overall was the R10 turbocharged diesel of Marco Werner and Lucas Luhr, while Audi teammates Emanuele Pirro and Frank Biela were a close second.
The race started with the Audis down on the grid, well off the qualifying pace. The Penske RS Spyder of Patrick Long and Sascha Maassen dominated the opening laps and the pair’s sister car of Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas led after the initial exchange of pit stops, but the Audis kept coming.
As the race passed its mid point, Werner found a way around Dumas. As the Audis maintained a narrow but consistent advantage over their LMP2 opponents, the space between Dumas and Brabham, who had long since gotten by Maassen, began to disappear at a rapid pace. With less than two laps left, Brabham squeezed by Dumas to lead the two Penske Porsches to the flag.
Afterwards, Brabham summed up his feelings, saying, “To win this race like we did was special. The team was on the radio to me in the closing laps, so I knew I didn’t have much time to get by, so I went for it, and it worked.”
Sharp put it even more simply, noting, “It was incredible.” As for Werner, he too was a model of simplicity. As he put it, “I thought we would be OK today despite the bumpiness of this track because I knew we’d be better under braking, and we had the advantage in torque.”
Even though the LMP2 cars didn’t win outright, they did occupy the remainder of the top 10, a remarkable achievement in itself.
In 11th overall, and first among the GT1 production cars, was the factory Corvette of Jan Magnussen and Johnny O’Connell, while their Corvette teammates, Olivier Beretta and Oliver Gavin, crossed the line right behind in 12th to garner the runner-up slot in the top assembly line-based category.
Close on the tails of the two Chevrolet sports cars in 13th was the Tafel Racing Ferrari 430GT of Dominik Farnbacher and Dirk Mueller, who finished a scant few feet ahead of the Flying Lizard Porsche GT3RSR of Jorg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler, with the second Flying Lizard GT3, driven by Johannes van Overbeek and Patrick Pilet, only a few more feet behind.