TOOELE, Utah — With all the focus at Miller Motorsports Park on the new de Ferran Motorsports Acura entry, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas did what they do best — win in the American Le Mans Series for Penske Racing and Porsche. The duo took a hard-fought victory Sunday in the Larry H. Miller Dealerships Utah Grand Prix presented by the Grand and Little America Hotels.
Dumas’s pole-sitting Porsche RS Spyder crossed the finish line 22.656 seconds ahead of Patrick Long in the second Penske Porsche that he shared with Sascha Maassen. The de Ferran entry of Simon Pagenaud and team owner Gil de Ferran placed third, nearly 29 seconds back.
“The key to the victory was the race strategy,” Bernhard said. “They brought me in during the second yellow and put me out of sequence so I had a clear run to the end. I was pushing quite a lot. It was hard because I couldn’t see the other people from the P2 class so all I had was the split time on my dash and I knew I just had to keep pushing.”
Dumas and Bernhard captured their first overall victory for Penske since a season-opening win at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring with Emmanuel Collard. The pairing also were winners in LMP2 after seeing their eight-race class winning streak end in the previous round at Long Beach.
Dumas inherited the lead when Audi Sport North America’s Emanuele Pirro pitted from first place near the two-hour mark but still had to withstand challenges from the two diesel-powered Audi R10 TDIs. Lucas Luhr suffered a slow puncture with 30 minutes to go while running within three seconds of Dumas, and Pirro made contact with David Robertson’s Ford GT just two minutes later and was knocked off course. The No. 1 Audi was penalized three championship points for the incident.
The first six cars were from the lighter, more nimble LMP2 cars that took advantage of its cornering abilities around the 3.048-mile, 15-turn circuit.
Luhr and Marco Werner were seventh overall, but finished first in LMP1 for the third-consecutive race. After entering with a two-race overall winning streak, the No. 2 Audi lost time with the spin after contact with Lou Gigliotti in the LG Motorsports Corvette C6. The incident resulted in a slow tire puncture for the Audi and a late-race penalty.
Intersport Racing’s Lola B06/10-AER finished second in class, its best finish of the season. Jon Field led early for four laps before a couple of spins and briefly losing power steering. Pirro and Frank Biela were third in class.
This was Audi’s last race before the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race the R10 TDI has won for the past two seasons. Audi has taken overall victory at Le Mans in seven of the last eight years.
Corvette Racing’s Johnny O’Connell and Jan Magnussen won their third GT1 race in four starts this season in the No. 3 Corvette C6.R. Magnussen finished more than a minute up on Oliver Gavin in the sister car. Olivier Beretta began from the pole in the No. 4 Corvette but O’Connell and Magnussen won the race in pit lane when the No. 4 car experienced trouble with its refueling system.
In each of the previous three rounds, the pole-sitting car ended up as the race winner.
Flying Lizard Motorsports’ Wolf Henzler and Jörg Bergmeister drove their Porsche 911 GT3 RSR to their first GT2 victory since Sebring with a one-lap victory over the sister Lizard Porsche of Johannes van Overbeek and Patrick Pilet.