Filed under: Motorsports, Audi, Porsche
ALMS season comes to a close at Laguna Seca
For the last race of the ALMS season at Laguna Seca, the P1, P2, and GT1 championships had already been wrapped up since Petit Le Mans. Still, the Audi team was out to better the Penske camp for the second race in a row after a close victory at Petit Le Mans. GT2 was the most exciting class, with the driver, team, and manufacturer championships all up for grabs. Risi Competizione came in as a heavy favorite, needing only to finish 70 percent of the race to clinch the team title.
Spoiler Alert: Follow the jump to read what went down.
Gallery: Audi R10 at Laguna Seca
In a near repeat of the race two weeks ago at Road Atlanta, Dindo Capello held off Romain Dumas in the Porsche to capture the second straight overall win for Audi. Capello and Dumas traded the lead several times in the last half hour, with the Audi's straight line speed giving it the edge over the Porsche. The margin of victory was a slim .41 seconds, making the total margin of victory over the last two races less than one and a half seconds. The win was an exclamation point for Allan McNish and Dindo Capello, who finished the season with a record nine class wins.
Despite losing the last two races overall, the Penske Porsches had a very successful season. Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard captured eight class wins, finishing the season with six straight.
In GT1, it was the typical snooze-fest with the Corvettes racing themselves. The only consolation was seeing ther Bad Boy Vettes livery. Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta beat out the sister car, making it nine wins on the season.
In GT2, Risi Competizione needed only to score points to capture the season championship, and solid driving by Mika Salo and Jaime Melo netted a win after the Flying Lizard team suffered a flat tire and a stop and go penalty that put them a lap down. This is the first series championship for both Ferrari drivers, and a first manufacturer title for Ferrari in ALMS as well. This is the first year that Porsche has lost the GT2 championship since BMW won in 2001.
The next ALMS race will be the 2008 Twelve Hours of Sebring from March 12-15.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brett 7:27PM (10/21/2007)
GT1 is not a snooze-fest. The Vettes are by far the coolest and funnest cars to watch in AMLS, even if they rarely get competition. They are also racing for overall too. Besides, go to any of the races, and the majority of fans are corvette racing fans, if the vettes ever left ALMS would slowly come to an end.
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chewy 10:57PM (10/21/2007)
Great race with very close battle at the end. Racing should be even better next year. Corvette's achievements are nothing, they never really raced anyone the entire ALMS season.
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Johnnie 11:24AM (10/22/2007)
GT1 is a snoozefest.
Make some rule changes and get P1 and P2 together.
Drop GT1 and have a ton of production based cars in GT2. That would make for some great racing.
ALMS is dying. These races have little to no fans at each race. It's very sad. They must make some changes.
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