LAKEVILLE, Conn. — The French probably aren’t happy. Here at the two-and-three-quarter-hour Northeast Grand Prix round of the American Le Mans Series, the LMP2 category Penske DHL Porsche RS Spyders led the way home for their fourth-consecutive overall ALMS triumph.
The performance by Sascha Maassen and Ryan Briscoe was a superb one. Briscoe took over the top spot from Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas in the sister Penske Porsche entry, which had sat on the pole, with less than a half an hour remaining and stayed there until the end. What was probably most amazing wasn’t so much the fact that the Penske factory RS Spyders won, but that the next two places down were likewise filled by LMP2 entries, this in spite of new, smaller air restrictors mandated for this race that cost them five percent of their power.
Indeed, the two LMP1 Audi R10 diesels that were so dominant just weeks ago at Le Mans had a horrible day. The car of Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner spun at the downhill right-hander at the head of the frontstraight and crashed heavily into the tire barrier, fortunately without any injuries being involved. Its sister car with Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello struggled to fifth overall after McNish spun twice on the frontstraight itself, the second time damaging the nose enough that the team was forced to replace it.
As a measure of the Audi team’s frustration with the rough, bumpy 1.54-mile tiny Lime Rock course, McNish and Capello were a full lap off the pace at the finish. The Acura ARX-01A of Highcroft Racing’s Stefan Johansson and David Brabham took third, a lap in front, while Chris Dyson and Guy Smith were fourth in their Porsche RS Spyder, nearly a mile ahead despite two stop-and-go penalties.
As McNish put it, "Even before we came here, we knew we would struggle in an LMP1 car. I was able to get a good start, but I really had to work just to keep up with the Porsches.”
And, as for the Porsches, Briscoe said that the fact that he and his partner took on new tires during their last pit stop, while Dumas and Bernhard stayed on old rubber, was “what made the difference.” Later, Maassen backed Briscoe up, saying, “For us, there was no losing. They were afraid of losing the lead and didn’t take tires, while we did. It was our biggest advantage.”
The nearly packed Lime Rock house was more than pleased with what they saw, as the similar-appearing LMP1 and LMP2 prototypes staged one of the better shows Lime Rock has seen in many years.
As for the other LMP1 Acuras, their afternoon was not as happy, with the Lowe’s-sponsored Acura Lola of Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz retiring with a broken suspension and the Team Andretti Green ARX-01A of Bryan Herta and Marino Franchitti winding up off course stuck in the mud during the closing minutes of the event.
In the production categories, there was similar action,  the GT1 Corvette team continuing its intra-squad battle, with Olivier Beretta and Oliver Gavin beating Jan Magnussen and Johnny O’Connell by three-tenths of a second as the Porsches and Ferraris slugged it out in GT2.
However, that slugfest was more between the Ferrari 430GTs themselves than it was with the Porsche GT2 RSR brigade that trailed behind for most of the race. In the end, the fratricidal Italian contest turned ugly, as the 430GT Petersen White Lightning entry of Tomas Enge and Darren Turner, which was leading at the time by a hair over the similar Risi Competizione coupe of Mika Salo and Jaime Melo, got tangled up with the second Risi entry of Eric Helary and Nic Jonsson, forcing all three into the pit for repairs.
The beneficiaries of this unwanted fight were Johannes van Overbeek and Jorg Bergmesiter, whose Flying Lizard GT3RSR assumed the lead and the victory, as well as the point lead in GT2, despite pitting for a flat tire on the first lap after its own encounter with an errant competitor. Second went to the Rahal Letterman Porsche of Tom Milner, Jr. and Ralf Kellners, while Helary and Jonsson were able to return to action and salvage third for the Ferrari camp.