Sunday, October 22, 2006

Dominant diesel!


Monterey, Calif. – Audi completed a perfect season in the American Le Mans Series on Saturday as Allan McNish and Dindo Capello won for the eighth time together by taking the Monterey Sports Car Championships at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Audi won all 10 Series events plus the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The diesel-powered Audi R10 TDI took seven victories in its first year of racing. Emanuele Pirro and Frank Biela finished second in the other Audi.

In LMP2, Lucas Luhr and Romain Dumas took a victory for Penske Racing in their Porsche RS Spyder, beating teammates Sascha Maassen and Timo Bernhard. The win for Luhr meant he and Maassen share the class drivers championship title, their third as a pairing.

Intersport Racing's Lola of Jon Field, Clint Field and Liz Halliday finished third.

In GT1, Stephane Sarrazin held off the Corvettes of Johnny O'Connell and Olivier Beretta for an Aston Martin Racing victory in the No. 009 Aston Martin DBR9 he shared with Pedro Lamy. But the second-place finish by Beretta and Gavin wrapped up the team title for Corvette Racing and the manufacturers championship for Corvette.

Mika Salo passed Jorg Bergmeister with less than 15 minutes to give the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari F430GT of Salo and Stephane Ortelli a GT2 class win overe the Petersen Motorsports/White Lightning Racing Porsche of Bergmeister and Patrick Long. All was not lost, however, as Bergmeister captured the class drivers championship.

All news/photo used with permission of the American LeMans Series and copyright American LeMans Series.
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Take heart sportscar racing fans....Sebring is only 4 months away...

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