ST PETERSBURG, Fla. — At Sebring, David slew Goliath. Here Saturday in the one hour and 55-minute American Le Mans Series Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, Goliath returned the favor.
As has been the case so many times before, the performance of the LMP1 Audi turbocharged diesel R10s and the LMP2 Penske DHL Porsche RS Spyders were near dead equal, the Porsches being quicker in the tighter portions of this temporary street circuit on the edge of Tampa Bay, while the Audi held the power advantage on the front straight going into turn one.
Throughout the contest for the overall honors was a shootout between the Audi of Marco Werner and Lucas Luhr and the Penske Porsche of Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard, one or the other leading throughout. In the latter stages, Dumas had been able to gain the lead when the Werner-Luhr entry was baulked in traffic.
But, after the final of several full-course yellows to haul away the errant cars, which crash tested the barriers surrounding the track, and cleaning up the debris left in their wake, the diesel was able to power by its rival with two laps to go and hold on for the victory.
Afterward, Werner expressed his surprise and pleasure at the outcome.
“We were not expecting the car to be this good, so it was great to go out and win a race for Audi,” he said. “For sure it was very exciting, but it was also very stressful with all the safety-car periods.”
When asked to comment on the final laps, Luhr was direct: “When I hit the throttle on the final restart, I knew I could get him. Before, during the race, while we were ‘dancing’ to the inside and then the outside, I was picking spots where I thought I could get by him, and that’s what I did.”
The triumph by Werner and Luhr made up for the disappointment at Sebring, where the Penske team celebrated the overall honors, and marked the second-consecutive year an R10 has claimed the outright race victory on Florida’s West Coast.
Doing a superlative job, Scott Sharp and David Brabham brought their Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-01b home third overall and second in LMP2 just ahead of the other Penske DHL RS Spyder with Patrick Long and Sascha Maassen aboard. Rounding out the top five was yet another of the RS Spyders, this belonging to Dyson Racing and driven by Guy Smith and Chris Dyson.
Up front, the close quarters of the St. Pete course took its toll on the second Audi of Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro, being eliminated by an accident, accidents also taking out the second Dyson Racing RS Spyder of Butch Leitzinger and Marino Franchitti, among others. While the carnage kept the corner workers busy, the damage fortunately was limited to the machinery. In the top-rated GT1 production category, with the Corvettes now running an 85-percent “green” Ethanol fuel, the change seemed to make little difference as the GM two seaters finished one-two, Olivier Beretta and Oliver Gavin leading Johnny O’Connell and Jan Magnussen across the line.
As for GT2 where the Ferrari-Porsche war is now in its third year, it was the Tafel Racing Ferrari 430GT of Dominik Farnbacher and Dirk Mueller over the Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3RSR of Patrick Pilet and Johannes van Overbeek, third going to the similar Franbacher Loles GT3RSR of Marc Basseng and Dirk Werner.