THE LINE

August 22, 2012

(John Thawley  ~  Motorsports Photography @ www.johnthawley.com  ~ 248.227.0110)
It was another spectacular finish for the American Le Mans Series at Road America. A year after missing out by 0.112 seconds, Guy Smith (No. 16 Dyson Racing Lola B12/60 Mazda) delivered a sensational victory for Dyson Racing on Saturday in the closest overall finish in the history of the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón – 0.083 seconds. Starting next-to-last on the grid, Smith and co-driver Chris Dyson won the four-hour Road America Road Race Showcase in a memorable finish. Lucas Luhr (No. 6 Muscle Milk Pickett Racing Honda Performance Development ARX-03a) passed Smith for the lead in the final corner (Turn 14) after storming back from four laps down, but Smith used the superior power and straight-line speed of his Lola-Mazda to win the race race up the hill to the checkered flag. “It was too close for comfort,” Smith said. “Last year was really close, I never expected something to beat that.” “Going into the final corner, Lucas was all over me,” he recounted. “I thought I had it covered, and to be honest he made a really good move. But I knew the way he got around me I could get back to him if I could slingshot around him. We opted over the weekend for the low down-force strategy. So we thought if we had to drag them in the straight line we could keep them behind us. In this case, the strategy worked for us.” BMW Team RLL’s Bill Auberlen and Jörg Müller (No. 55 BMW E92 M3) used an advantageous caution flag situation to win yet another hard-fought battle in GT. Conquest Endurance’s Martin Plowman and David Heinemeier-Hansson won their second P2 race of the year and led overall twice in their Morgan-Nissan prototype. Dempsey Racing’s No. 27 Lola-Judd finished second, the highest finish in ALMS for the pairing of Patrick Dempsey and Joe Foster. The other big story was CORE’s championship run in LMPC. Kimber-Smith (No. 06 ORECA FLM09) out-dueled teammate Colin Braun in the No. 05 entry throughout the last half of the race and won by 0.423 seconds. It was the team’s second 1-2 finish of the season. And Cooper MacNeil and Jeroen Bleekemolen won GT Challenge by 2.459 seconds in their Porsche 911 GT3 Cup for Alex Job Racing. Next up for the ALMS is the the streets of Baltimore, Md., for Round 7 of the championship. The Baltimore Sports Car Challenge presented by SRT is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 1 on the temporary street circuit in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. ABC's broadcast begins at noon ET on Sunday, Sept. 2. Full, live coverage starts at 4:15 p.m. ET on ESPN3. Check out John Thawley's scintillating images from Road America - "America's National Park of Speed" - here. And see the replay of the race here. And finally, check out the Top 5 Moments from Road America here.

(Brian Czobat - 2012, autostock, USA)
Greg Biffle (No. 16 Roush Fenway racing 3M Ford Fusion) won his 18th career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race Sunday afternoon at Michigan International Speedway. It was Biffle's third career Sprint Cup win at MIS and his second win of the season. Jimmie Johnson moved into the lead and had 'em covered until he didn't, the engine in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Lowe's Chevrolet Impala blowing up with just five laps left in the race. Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Penske Racing Miller Lite Dodge) was second in another championship-caliber run, and Kasey Kahne (No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Farmers insurance Chevrolet Impala) was third. Biffle had this to say about Johnson' troubles after the race: “Well, I thought that I knew I would be able to get him then. I was closing in on him and I don’t know if I would have got him in those eight laps or not but it would have been a hell of a run to the end. I found some speed in the top line down there in three and four and was coming on him. I don’t know if I would have got there but we will take them any way we can get them. We had a damn good car today.” Biffle is now at the top of the latest Sprint Cup championship standings.

(Porsche)
From the Porsche Press Release: Porsche Motorsport North America (PMNA) today announced it will expand from serving teams and owners of contemporary 911 race cars to providing a similar service to the large number of collectors of vintage Porsche race cars in the US and Canada. PMNA has established a partnership with a new historic motorsports department that is currently being established within Porsche AG’s Motorsport Division in Weissach, Germany. The new department will provide expert restoration services to the Porsche Museum for many of the vintage competition cars the company owns well beyond the ones displayed in its riveting exhibition center. When ready, a number of these cars will be entered in the increasingly popular vintage racing circuit around the world. “We want to keep the memory of Porsche’s many racing successes alive by not just putting our legendary race cars on display but by letting them actively compete in events that celebrate historic motorsports,” said Achim Stejskal, Director of the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. “Race cars have to race, not rust,” he added with a smile. Working closely with the Weissach, Germany based operation, PMNA will add heritage racecar restoration and servicing to its repertoire. So far, the company has been mainly involved in the selling and supporting 911 race cars to North American owners and teams as well as in the restoration of race engines for historic Porsche race cars like the 917 and 962. PMNA will move its operations from its current Santa Ana, CA location to Carson, CA where Porsche Cars North America is building its West Coast Experience Center. As an industry first, PMNA will be able to offer race car owners the opportunity to store their cars in the new facility in a museum-like atmosphere, service them between races and get them race ready before each outing including the necessary shakedown/roll-out on the test track after repair and maintenance work.

(IndyCar)
Team Penske's Will Power, who leads the IndyCar series point standings by five over Ryan Hunter-Reay, said the introduction of the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series chassis and the ability to run closer together has raised the level of competition on both ovals and road/street courses. "It's insanely competitive," the two-time series runner-up said. "You haven't seen anyone consistently win poles or win races. No one dominates this series. It just proves how tough it is and tight it is. You have to work on all the finer points of your driving just to be competitive. Anyone in any other series in the world could come here and I can guarantee you it would take them a good year to get competitive, if they are a good driver." Any driver within 107 points of the lead will remain eligible for the championship as the series heads to Baltimore on Sept. 2. But the closeness of the competition among drives almost assures that the title race will go down to the final race of the season for the seventh consecutive season. "It's the beauty of the series going from a road course to a street course to a fast oval," Oriol Servia said. "It's what I've always loved about (Indy car racing) - the mixed schedule. Teams have to change a lot of different things in the car and the drivers have to have different skills. I love the challenge and love that we show the challenge to the fans. The championship will be a fight to the end."

 Michelin. The four–hour Road Race Showcase at Road America produced a pair of repeat winners in the MICHELIN® GREEN X® CHALLENGE. Indianapolis-based Conquest Endurance Racing, Nissan, and co-drivers Martin Plowman and David Heinemeier Hansson took their second consecutive MICHELIN® GREEN X® CHALLENGE Prototype win. Their LMP2 class victory in the four-hour race marks the 29th time in Michelin Green X Challenge history that an award winner also won its class on track. Scoring its fourth MICHELIN® GREEN X® CHALLENGE win in the last five ALMS races was the E85 R fueled No. 3 Corvette Racing C6 ZR1 driven by Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia. Corvette Racing also earned a 1-2 finish in today’s Michelin Green X Challenge, marking the third time in the four-year history of the awards that Corvette Racing has won the GT category Michelin Green X Challenge honors at Road America. The final margin for the winning Corvette over its No. 4 team car was a narrow 0.085 points under the Green Racing formula established by the U.S. Department of Energy, the EPA, and SAE International. The formula calculates Clean, Fast, and Efficient performance. The score reflects a measure of the oil used and greenhouse gas emissions for each car on a well-to-wheel basis, each car’s speed during the race and the car’s energy consumption divided by the car’s mass.

 

Editor-in-Chief's Note: Check out Michelin's racing website - "Michelin Alley" - and get in on all of the behind-the-scenes buzz. Go here. - PMD

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