Phew, what a scorcher! Not only was the weather hot and steamy at Lime Rock Park this weekend, but so were the temperaments of several competitors within the 33-strong field by the time we got to (and past) the chequered flag. The thousands of fans present for the July 4th holiday weekend, plus Connecticut’s Governor who gave the ‘Start Your Engines’ command for the Northeast Grand Prix, were treated to an all-action race, with never a dull moment from start to finish around the 1.47 mile ‘bullring’ track.
The coolest people in this scenic part of Connecticut were the Muscle Milk Pickett duo of Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf who cruised to a six lap victory over Dyson Racing’s Lola-Mazda, despite Luhr having to work hard for it in the first half of the race.
The tall German’s HPD ARX 03a led the field off at the start for four formation laps – and was none too pleased to have the Race Director abort the scheduled start and demand that the field pack up again. Once the racing got underway Luhr and Chris Dyson had a see-saw battle for the lead, with both the #6 and #16 taking turn and turnabout at the front. The balance tipped in Pickett Racing’s favour when Dyson came in for a stop earlier than originally scheduled as a malfunctioning AC unit in the car resulted in a severely overheated driver. A delay in getting the belts hooked up when Guy Smith got in, together with subsequent delays for further cooling issues (car this time), saw them drop back and back. After a mega two-hour stint from Luhr, and a closing 45 minutes from Graf, during which they both showed great patience in traffic, they came home for their third win in four races.
Lucas said afterwards: “It was fun to fight with Chris. With our car we are a little bit slower down the straights than the coupés but I finally got around them, and got a bit of a gap. Then they had a bit of a problem, and they were gone. You have to say to yourself, stay calm, everything is fine, and it will all sort itself. We managed to have really good stops, even though some of our mechanics were suffering from the heat. It was hot in the car but you don’t really have time to think about it as you’re so busy out there.”
The Elan-engined DeltaWing, driven by Andy Meyrick and Katherine Legge, had by far its best run of the season to date – despite it not finishing the 2h45 race. It eventually succumbed to water cooling issues at around two thirds distance, but both drivers said that vast improvements have been made since Laguna Seca and things are moving in the right direction.
The P2 category was under the spotlight post-race, but for all the wrong reasons. Scott Tucker and Ryan Briscoe were the first to take the flag in the No.551 Level 5 Motorsport HPD ARX 03b, followed over the line 42 seconds later by the No.01 Extreme Speed HPD… and some controversy. Three minutes before the end of the race busy Briscoe – who, don’t forget, was pulling double-duty with Indycar at Pocono – had some contact with the then-leading No.01 ESM car of Cosmo. The latter did a bit of off-roading but managed to pull it all back together to finish.
“What happened going up the hill wasn’t my intention at all,” said Briscoe afterwards. “It looked like he got on the curb a little bit and the traction control may have come in or something and there was a bit of contact. I think my nose just tagged his rear and it certainly wasn’t the way we wanted it to go. Really tough conditions with the heat today, but overall just a great win for the team and a fun battle.”
Unfortunately for the likeable Australian and Tucker, the incident was put under review and the result was that the 551 car received a post-race time penalty equivalent to a stop+60s for avoidable contact. While still classified as winners on the results sheets, the duo will only receive points for third place. Third in class was that man Tucker again, this time paired with Marino Franchitti in the 552 Level 5 HPD.
While the PC cars finished ahead of the GT category, we’ll first turn our attention to the latter as that’s where things really got heated. Olly Gavin’s comment about the conditions being “toasty” was apt and several drivers were close to being fried.
GT class honours went to BMW Team RLL who, from the start of the weekend, looked a class apart from the others. Starting from pole, John Edwards and Dirk Müller took a flag-to-flag victory with the No.56 BMW Z4, although they were pushed hard by Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen’s No.3 Corvette C6.R, especially in the late stages of the race. A gap of 0.905 seconds was all that separated them at the finish and the yellow Vette had a trouble free run in the position from the 10th lap onwards. The result was Edwards’ first ALMS career win and Müller’s 18th, extending the latter’s lead in the points battle by some margin.
Dedicating the win to Allan Simonsen (and very many of the GT cars in the field carried decals in memory of their friend and competitor), the German said: “First off, I want to take a moment to send that win to Allan. I was thinking of him a couple of times during the race, so I’d like to send that out to him. Lime Rock is really difficult as you have to watch out in the traffic. John drove like he’s driven here 20 times before, not like it was the first time. This is only race four and leading the championship is great, but it’s still a long way to go.”
Third in class went to the No. 06 CORE autosport 911 GT3 RSR of Pat Long and Tom Kimber-Smith. The Porsche’s extremely impressive fuel economy had a few engineers double checking their figures as it managed to run for over two hours on one tank of fuel. It dropped to fourth following a late-race splash under the second of only two yellow flag periods, and the duo were probably consoling themselves that that would have to be their final placing. It marked the first podium finish for CORE’s new Porsche GT effort in only its second race.
All things being equal, third place should have gone to the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari of Matteo Malucelli and Olivier Beretta but the Italian threw it away with an over-ambitious overtaking manoeuvre in the chicane with two minutes left to run. That the F458 was in third at all was thanks to a brave and clever strategy of the team’s engineers.
After having to make an early stop for a cut tyre, and surviving a messed up pit stop courtesy of a hefty shove from Tommy Drissi’s No.7 PC entry as he came too sharply into the pit box ahead of Risi’s, some quick thinking was required to try and make up lost time and places. The Ferrari had been running in 3rd but dropped to 8th, and the first of the yellows came just at the right time for them, albeit only 20 minutes after their first stop. They took on fuel with the aim of going to the finish – a strategy that was working well until the fateful final two minutes. Risi too received a stop+60s time penalty but it didn’t affect their points as they were classified last in class anyway.
Fourth in GT was the second BMW, the No.55 of Bill Auberlen and Maxime Martin who didn’t have as smooth a run as their team mates and, along with at least one Viper, one Corvette, a Porsche and another Ferrari, all suffered from contact in one form or another. More than one driver is now firmly on the radar of the Race Director which is never a good place to be!
Bruno Junqueira prevailed in a 4m 15s dash to the chequered flag to join Duncan Ende in giving RSR Racing its first victory in the Prototype Challenge class which must have been of considerable relief to Ende. The crew of the No. 9 ORECA FLM09 had had a torrid build up to the race after Ende had gone off track twice, damaging the car and giving the crew a lot of hard work to do in the blistering heat.
“The biggest challenge was putting the car back together,” acknowledged the American. “I screwed up yesterday and crashed, it didn’t do us any favours. Then the guys put everything back together and Bruno put it on the front row. In this morning’s warm up we got into the wrong place and we had to put it back together again. The team did a great job giving me a great car, in fact the best car I’ve ever driven. It was a great job by the RSR team all around. I just made it look easy.”
It was the second career ALMS victory for Junqueira, and the fifth for Ende and they were chased hard by Colin Braun and Jon Bennett in the No. 05 CORE autosport ORECA, particularly after the field closed up with the late race yellow. Braun set a new race lap record along the way and claimed second in class, just 0.9 seconds behind RSR. They were joined on the podium by Tristan Nunez and Ryan Booth in the No. 18 Performance Tech Motorsports car.
Flying Lizard followed up a strong qualifying effort with a GTC win with the No. 45 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car driven by Nelson Canache Jr. and Spencer Pumpelly. They took the flag over two laps ahead of the No.11 JDX Racing entry of Jan Heylen and Mike Hedlund (a potential tongue-twister for commentators there) and it was Nelson’s first win in the ALMS in only his fifth start in the series.
“Nelson had a brilliant opening stint – turning the car over to me in the lead,” Pumpelly said later. “All I had to do was drive it home. Flying Lizard Motorsports identified a few areas we needed to work on in the gap since Laguna, and it showed today. One of them was qualifying – and we won the pole yesterday. Now that we have that monkey off our back we can focus on the rest of the season, keep pushing and keep going faster.”
Third in class was the No.66 TRG Porsche of Damien Faulkner and Ben Keating but a podium place should have gone to the No.22 Alex Job entry which sadly finished the race badly damaged after being the innocent victim of Malucelli’s ricochet off the barriers. Fortunately no one was hurt.
The feel in much of the paddock was one of relief to have got to the end of this weekend – the lack of racing over the last two months was apparent by the number of pit infringements handed out up and down the field. Whether United Sportscar returns to Lime Rock next year remains to be seen – there are many who would be happy not to return to the bullring track. Next up is Canadian Tire Motorsport Park – it’s going to be hard not to refer to it as Mosport – which is a whole new challenge for everyone.
Fiona Miller
