The farewell tour of the ALMS continues and the hits keep coming – some on track and some off…
The race at Lime Rock was a pretty well behaved affair by Lime Rock standards, at least until late into the 2 hour 45 minute race. While there were some impressive efforts, it is the “hits” that the race will likely be remembered for.
One, the Ryan Briscoe hit on Guy Cosmo settled the P2 battle in a rather unsatisfactory manner. According to the regulation updates released post-Sebring, the race winner will be declared by the actual finish on track – just like NASCAR and Grand-Am. Since this incident occurred late in the race, the series officials took the regulation to heart and allowed the Level 5 entry to be declared the class winner, even though anyone who saw the incident knew there would be a penalty forthcoming.
It was a bit of a surprise to me, and to many others, that the Level 5 win was allowed to stand, even with those new regulations in place. Surely there was plenty of time between the race finish and the podium celebrations in which to inform the parties involved of the penalties levied. But that wasn’t the decision levied and Level 5 was allowed to claim the win, which they surely did in their PR release.
Okay – we get the intent of the regulation and in many instances it does make sense; but to this scribe, in this instance, it simply doesn’t. Why go through the effort of celebrating the win when everybody knows there is a pending penalty? It just seems so wrong in many ways.
Yes, there was a points-change – the Briscoe/Tucker entry was awarded third-place points and the ESM Cosmo/Sharp entry was able to claim maximum points. By virtue of the penalty, the final points reward elevated the Marino Franchitti/Tucker Level 5 entry to second in the race, points wise. This put Marino into first place in the points hunt, three points ahead of his boss and three points ahead of the Cosmo/Sharp combo. Knowing the workings of Level 5, it’s just a matter of time before strategy is developed which will place Tucker back on top; only now it becomes difficult – the ESM boys are right there, ready to pounce.
A further complication is a broken wrist for Briscoe, incurred while on IndyCar duty at Toronto at the weekend. The driver expects a swift recovery, but will he be able to race as early as next Sunday?
While there is some controversy in the class, at least we have some competition in P2.
The other memorable hit occurred very late in the race also. In traffic, Matteo Malucelli made what can be best described as an optimistic move in his Risi Ferrari, lost control and ended up t-boning the Alex Job Porsche. This was a huge hit, which resulted in the AJR Porsche tub to be written off. The team afterwards also found that the engine and gearbox casings were cracked from the impact.
For Risi, their comeback season has hit yet another bump. It started with great promise at Sebring and, at Lime Rock, the team weathered early on track incidents, including a cut tire and even contact in the pits from a PC competitor. Through all of this, the team was in place to finish a very commendable third in class. Thus far, the team has been the Risi team we have enjoyed throughout the years – it’s just been the drivers that are not holding up their end of the deal.
As a result of the incident, Risi has been forced to miss the upcoming round at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, as the magnititude of the necessary repairs means that the job could not have been satisfactorily completed in the time available. According to Alex Job, the team intends to be competing at “Mosport” as they attempt to work towards yet another championship.
In P1, it looked like Dyson Racing was ready to give Pickett Racing a strong challenge, at least in the first hour or so. Chris Dyson, who started, drove a magnificent opening stint. He held off repeated challenges from Lucas Luhr, who is quite possibly the hottest driver in the series and maybe even of all sportscar racing right now.
Unfortunately, it all went wrong for Dyson at the pit stop. The seat insert shuffle caused the seat belts to be obscured, which prolonged the driver change; then the team struggled through air conditioning issues as well as an electrical issue. But at least they finished and brought home their first points-finish of the season.
But the hits just keep coming. At the time we didn’t realize it, but the drive at Lime Rock may be the last time we have the Chris Dyson/Guy Smith pairing for the season, as the team has announced a major reshuffle. With nothing to be gained for this season, the team has started looking towards 2014 and has brought in Tony Burgess and Chris McMurry for most of the rest of the season. Chris will be focusing his efforts on sorting direction for the team, which had just celebrated their 30th anniversary of competition.
Bringing in Burgess and McMurry in for the remainder of the season is possibly a part of the direction for next season and beyond, but the team also needs to sort the remainder. According to the team release, Chris expects the team to be competing with a P2 car, but according to the release nothing else is settled. Rumors have had the team looking at WEC and USCR efforts for next season, with the direction varying according to the source. Don’t be surprised if the team shows up at an upcoming race this season with a P2 car.
Hopefully the hits will stop for now, as the series ventures north of the border. P1 is done – Muscle Milk is the final ALMS P1 champion. They can look forward to competing against Rebellion later on a race by race basis, but all that is left for them is to determine their course for the next season.
PC tightened up a bit after Lime Rock, with both CORE and RSR gaining on PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports in the points chase. Currently, Mike Guasch holds a two-point advantage over Colin Braun, who is a further 11 points ahead of Bruno Junqueira.
GT is on the verge of being another BMW season. While the Bobby Rahal-led effort continues to go from strength to strength, the other championship contenders appear to be faltering. When you add in teams like CORE, who stole third-place points away from contenders at Lime Rock, the 16 point lead by Dirk Muller in the standings looks pretty healthy. Chasing Dirk are a tight group, led by Magnussen/Garcia for Corvette and John Edwards – Dirk’s usual teammate. One point further back are Milner/Gavin for Corvette and the other BMW effort for Auberlen and Martin. Dom Farnbacher and Marc Goossens were right in the midst of the chase, but their DNF at Lime Rock really hurt them badly points-wise.
While BMW did look very strong at Lime Rock and has looked pretty strong throughout the season, all it takes is a bad race or two for it all to change. This next stretch of races will go a long way towards sorting out the contenders, but BMW does seem to have the momentum right now.
As far as a championship chase, GTC is setting up to be fantastic. Henrique Cisneros leads for NGT, but a poor points-finish/late DNF at Lime rock hurt them tremendously. AJR was in place to capitalize and make up some gap, but the wreck late in the race cost them dearly. The team was looking at second place points but had to settle for fifth. The big gain was by the race winners –Flying Lizard. Spencer Pumpelly and Nelson Canache Jr. won, capitalizing on mishaps for others and also taking advantage of what the team learned about the idiosyncrasies of the GTC spec Porsche during the Le Mans break. It may be spec racing, but this last GTC championship is setting up to be a great show that should go to the wire.
At Lime Rock a common theme registered throughout the weekend – will the USCR return in 2014? At this point, that appears to be doubtful. The size of the track may not be support what is hoped to be a large grid next season, unless split grids are taken into consideration. But to be honest, until the schedule is published, most of the events will be in the same boat. Long Beach? Yes. Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca? Yes. Lime Rock? Yes. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park? We’ll see…
Gary Horrocks
