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Christian Miller, of Newark, Calif., had a career-best finish of sixth in his No. 25 034 Motorsport Volkswagen Jetta, earning Piloti Rookie of the Race honors.
Huge congratulations to Miller and the boys at 034! VW in da haus!
Technorati Tags: VW, Volkswagen, Mosport, O34 Motosport, Jetta, MKIV
Chip Herr, of Lititz, Pa., battled damp conditions, a slew of Acuras and a Mazda to wheel his Audi A4 to a second-consecutive SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge Touring Car win today at Mosport International Raceway, part of the Mobil 1 Presents Labour Day Grand Prix Weekend. Brandon Davis, of Denver, Colo., and Pierre Kleinubing, of Coconut Creek, Fla., completed the podium.
Herr started from the pole on the damp track, but relinquished the lead twice over the course of the 25-lap, 61.475-mile event that was limited to 50 minutes in duration. In the end, he took his third-career win by 6.491 seconds, averaging 72.074 mph.
Driving the No. 17 Agincourt Autohaus/STaSIS Audi A4, Herr relinquished the lead to the No. 73 Tri-Point Motorsports/Mazdaspeed Mazda 6 of Randy Pobst at the start, done single-file, similar to a re-start, after a delay to retrieve a broken down car on the formation lap aborted the traditional standing start. Herr re-took the point from Pobst on the third lap, only to come under attack by a slew of Acuras.
On a lap-13 restart, Davis got the jump on the field from fourth to take the lead in his No. 20 Acura Certified Pre-Owned/RealTime Racing Acura TSX. From there, he held off a furious attack from teammate Kleinubing, in the No. 42 entry, until Kleinubing succumbed to pressure from Herr on lap 19. Two laps later, Herr was past Davis for the lead, and clicked off a succession of fastest race laps to speed away to the win.
“On the restart my car just completely shut down,” Herr said of the restart when Davis and Kleinubing passed for the lead. “I was on the throttle. It would have been a nice drag race for us, but my car just cut out and I saw a lot of cars come to the inside of me. I knew it was a long race so I had to just hang back there and hope that the problem would fix itself.”
After watching Michael Galati use all-wheel-drive in rainy conditions to lap all but second place in the SPEED GT race, Herr was confident of his chances in Sunday’s damp conditions.
“The weather was definitely a factor for the STaSIS Audi,” said Herr, who also won at Mid-Ohio in May and at Road America two weeks ago. “The car handles really well in the dry, but when it comes to wet weather…I really thought we had a huge advantage over the Acuras. But today, I’m really impressed how well these guys drove and how well their cars handled, because the only advantage I saw was coming out of Turn Five, which is a really slow turn, so it’s just about traction. Everywhere else it was pretty heads-up with them.
“It was a good run for us today. Agincourt Autohaus was a big help coming on board this week in Canada. We didn’t expect two wins in-a-row, nobody expects wins in SPEED World Challenge, but we’ll take ’em when we can get ’em.”
Today’s race will be broadcast on SPEED Channel Sunday, Sept. 10 at 3 p.m. (EDT).
Technorati Tags: STaSIS, Audi, Chip Herr, SpeedTV, World Challenge, Audi A4
Another championship performance by Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello has delivered just that. The two Audi factory drivers clinched the American Le Mans Series’ LMP1 championship with a victory Sunday at the Grand Prix of Mosport, their sixth of the season.
The title is the first for Capello and second for McNish. With Sunday’s 2.794-second win over Dyson Racing’s Chris Dyson and Guy Smith, the Capello-McNish pairing leads Dyson’s James Weaver and Butch Leitzinger by 49 points, the amount available for winning the final two Series rounds. So even if Weaver and Leitzinger win at Petit Le Mans and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca – and McNish and Capello score none – the Audi drivers would win the tiebreaker by having more victories than their rivals.
“I had a lot of success before – wins at Le Mans, at Sebring, at Petit Le Mans – but never the championship,” said Capello, who watched McNish win the Series title in 2000 as his teammate. “Now to get that, it is really special. When I started with Allan he didn’t have a lot of experience in North America, and we both grew together. Now six years later we are still here and winning races. That says a lot because you can lose competitiveness and lose patience, but we’re still here and now we have this championship.”
The No. 2 crew played the race strategy perfectly. After pitting early in the race for tires and fuel, the Audi came in before the Weaver’s and Leitzinger’s Lola during the next cycle to take on a last tank of diesel fuel. That came after the No. 16 crew took on just fuel for their first stop, meaning it needed both rubber and fuel on its last stop.
Although he was up against it late, Smith drove his way through the field and reduced what had been a 20-second deficit to six seconds with two minutes left. Smith posted the fastest race lap – a record 1:07.446 – but McNish did just enough to keep his pursuer at bay.
“The Dysons really put the pressure on us when all they did was get fuel,” McNish said. “I knew that we would have to stretch and I knew we were going to struggle when guy came out only 20 seconds behind. We had longer tires and we had more trouble with pickup and I gave it all she had.”
Which was enough, as it turns out.
“I think the strategy was perfect,” Capello said. “If you are lighter you can be easier on tires. I think they took a really clever strategy and they lost some time in the pit stop with problems with the tire. And they were very competitive and Guy Smith did a great last lap and they showed.”
Lap 38 Final lap. Kristensen takes his second DTM victory of the season from Schneider, Tomczyk, Spengler, Frtnetten, Scheider, Mücke, Green, Kaffer and La Rosa.
Lap 36 Schneider and Tomczyk side-by-side at Gerlach corner, Schneider gets through and takes second place
Lap 34 Mücke past Kaffer for eighth plac
Lap 31 Schneider keeps the pressure on Tomczyk
Lap 29 Schneider attacks Tomczyk for second. La Rosa into the pits
Lap 27 Green and Ekström collide at Tarzan in the battle for fifth. Ekström runs wide, continues.
Lap 26 Tomczyk and Schneider battle for second. Stippler into the pits
Lap 25 Green attacking Ekström for fifth.
Lap 24 Margaritis into the pits. Problems with the left rear wheel. Margaritis retires
Lap 24 Margaritis into the pits. Problems with the left rear wheel
Lap 24 Margaritis into the pits
Lap 23 Tomczyk past Margaritis, Mücke and Margaritis side-by-side. Kristensen and Schneider into the pits
Lap 22 Frentzen, Scheider into the pits
Lap 21 Tomczyk, Spengler into the pits
Lap 19 Kaffer into the pits
Lap 18 Green into the pits
Lap 17 Ekström into the pits
Lap 16 La Rosa into the pits
Lap 15 Kristensen past La Rosa
Lap 14 Häkkinen into the pits
Lap 13 Warning for Mattias Ekström: pushing another car. Kristensen into the pits, the tank can is stuck
Lap 12 Tomczyk, Spengler, Häkkinen into the pits
Lap 11 Schneider into the pits, Häkkinen comes in for his drive-through
Lap 10 Frentzen into the pits
Lap 9 Ekström hits the rear of Stippler’s car and drives the diffusor off
Lap 8 Abt into the pits
Lap 7 Abt and Häkkinen collide at Scheivlak, continue. Mücke, Alesi into the pits
Lap 6 Schneider past Kaffer for sixth place at the exit of Tarzan. Ekström, Green, Kaffer, Margaritis into the pits. Problems for Pierre Kaffer during the pit stop
Lap 4 Kristensen has a margin of 0.6 seconds over Tomczyk, Ekström is third ahead of Green
Lap 3 Ickx’s car is being pushed into the pits, the end of the race for her
Lap 2 Vanina Ickx continues, but loses the bonnet of her Audi A4. Kiesa’s car is still stuck in the gravel trap. Green has claimed back fourth place from Frentzen, Kaffer is closing up in sixth. Ickx in the pits
Lap 1 Frentzen past Green for fourth at the exit of Tarzan corner. Kiesa and Ickx collide at Masters corner
Start Kristensen takes the lead from Tomczyk, Ekström. Green drops back to fourth
The track is dry after rain in the morning. Air temperature 21.0 degrees, track temperature 21.8 degrees.
Technorati Tags: Audi, Audi A4, DTM, Mercedes-AMG, AMG, Zandvoort
Chip Herr, of Lititz, Pa., captured his first SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge Touring Car pole of the year after swapping the top spot with at least four other drivers during a 20-minute session that saw conditions go from damp to dry at Mosport International Raceway. Defending race winner Charles Espenlaub, of Lutz, Fla., will start Sunday’s race second.
After a brief shower dampened the SPEED GT session earlier in the hour, the rain ceased for the most part and allowed a line to dry around the rolling 2.459-mile circuit. Herr, taking advantage of the quattro all-wheel-drive system on his No. 17 Agincourt Autohaus/STaSIS Audi A4, took the point early in the session as many predicted. However, as the track dried, several drivers jumped to the top of the charts.
As the session wound down, Herr, who had made a call to the pits, returned to the circuit behind point leader Kleinubing and turned a fastest time of 1:31.143 (97.126 mph) to earn the second pole of his career.
“At first we were excited for the first lap in the rain because that”s all-wheel-drive weather,” Herr, who has two wins on the season including two weeks ago at Road America, said. “Then it started to dry up. The first three laps I really thought I had in the bag because I was driving around with Randy [Pobst] and Peter [Cunningham] and it was like a game. But it started to dry out and everybody was going three seconds faster. I came in to check tire pressures and we were going to wait to go back out to make sure our tires were the best they could. When we went back out, I hooked up with Pierre. He was driving the same way I was, so I could use him as a draft on the back straightaway for my fast lap.”
Herr was not shy about his weather preference for Sunday morning’s race.
“Rain, anything from a drizzle to a all-rain, because that’s where our car really works,” he said. “Coming out of the corner and under braking is the only real advantage we have. Our cars are heavy to begin with, so this is the advantage we have. If it would snow, that’d be good too.”
Christian Miller (Volkswagen Jetta) completed the top 10.
Sunday’s Round Eight race is scheduled to make its standing start Sunday at 11 a.m. (EDT). To follow all the action via Live Timing and Scoring Presented by SRT and live lap notes, please visit the SCCA Pit Board via the event page on www.world-challenge.com.
Sunday’s race will be broadcast Sunday, Sept. 10 at 3 p.m. (EDT) on SPEED.
technorati tags:STaSIS, Audi, Chip Herr, SpeedTV, World Challenge, A4
For the fourth time this season and for the sixth time in his DTM career, Mercedes-Benz works driver Jamie Green will be starting from pole-position for a DTM-race. In an action-packed three-heat shoot out qualifying session at the circuit of Zandvoort in The Netherlands, the 24-year old Brit outpaced Audi-drivers Tom Kristensen, Martin Tomczyk and Mattias Ekström. A lap time of 1.32.189 was enough for Green to claim the most favourable grid position for tomorrow’s seventh season round of the DTM, which will start at 14.00 h (ARD live from 13.45 h).
Tom Kristensen, equal on points with championship runner-up Bruno Spengler, will be starting from the front row again for tomorrow’s race, just like he did at the Nürburgring a fortnight ago. The second grid row will be locked-out by Audi, with Martin Tomczyk third and Mattias Ekström fourth. The two are followed by Canadian Bruno Spengler, who won the two most recent DTM races at the Norisring and the Nürburgring and is currently second in the points together with Tom Kristensen. Points leader Bernd Schneider, who could only do five timed laps in free practice on Saturday morning due to a technical problem, qualified in seventh place with his AMG-Mercedes C-Class behind Audi’s Heinz-Harald Frentzen.
Pierre Kaffer (Audi Sport Team Phoenix) was the best-placed driver with a year-old car in eighth place, while Austrian Mathias Lauda claimed a remarkable 13th position on the grid as the fastest driver with a 2004-spec car. Danish ex-Formula 1-driver Nicolas Kiesa failed to match his performance from free practice on Saturday morning, when he was an excellent seventh with his two-year old Audi A4 DTM of Audi’s customer team Futurecom TME. Im qualifying, Kiesa came out 18th. He is followed by lady racers Vanina Ickx (Original Zubehör-Audi A4) and Susie Stoddart (AutoScout24 AMG-Mercedes C-Class).
Technorati Tags: Audi, Audi A4, DTM, Mercedes-AMG, AMG, Zandvoort
Rain washed out qualifying for the Mobil 1 presents Labour Day Weekend Grand Prix of Mosport on Saturday, putting James Weaver and Dyson Racing’s No. 16 Lola on pole position for Sunday’s eighth round of the American Le Mans Series.
The LMP1 championship-leading Audi R10 TDI of Allan McNish and Dindo Capello will start on the outside front row. Staying in front of the Audi will go a long way toward keeping Weaver and Leitzinger in the championship chase heading into Petit Le Mans at the end of the month. A lot of that, though, depends on how much – if any – rain falls Sunday.
The first of the LMP2 cars, Penske Racing’s No. 7 Porsche RS Spyder, will start third overall. Romain Dumas’ best recorded time was 1:07.221, good enough for the class pole by 0.161 seconds over the sister car of Sascha Maassen and Timo Bernhard.
1. Lola B06/10 AER (P1)
2. Audi R10 TDI Power (P1)
3. Porsche RS Spyder (P2)
4. Lola B06/10 AER (P1)
5. Porsche RS Spyder (P2)
6. Audi R10 TDI Power (P1)
7. Lola B05/40 AER (P2)
8. Lola EX257 AER (P1)
9. Aston Martin DBR9 (GT1)
10. Aston Martin DBR9 (GT1)
11. Corvette C6.R (GT1)
12. Corvette C6.R (GT1)
13. Ferrari 430 GT Berlinetta (GT2)
14. Ferrari 430 GT Berlinetta (GT2)
15. Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (GT2)
16. BMW E46 M3 (GT2)
17. Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (GT2)
18. Panoz Esperante GTLM (GT2)
19. Panoz Esperante GTLM (GT2)
20. Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (GT2)
21. Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (GT2)
22. BMW E46 M3 (GT2)
The Mobil 1 presents Labour Day Grand Prix of Mosport, Round 8 of the 2006 American Le Mans Series, is set for 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 3. The race will be broadcast live on SPEED Channel. American Le Mans Radio’s live play-by-play and IMSA Live Timing & Scoring will be available at americanlemans.com.
American Le Mans Series :: World Class
Technorati Tags: Audi, Audi R10, ALMS, Porsche, Mosport, RS Spyder
Yet another fastest time for Audi at Zandvoort: after Martin Tomczyk and Heinz-Harald Frentzen on Friday, Christian Abt set the fastest time in free practice on Saturday morning. The Bavarian completed a total of ten laps with his Audi A4 DTM from last year, the fastest one of them in 1:33.492 minutes. Abt was 0.995 seconds faster than the best lap time on Friday, which was set by Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Thus, he outpaced his two fellow-Audi drivers Mattias Ekström and Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who were second and third respectively. In the morning session, eleven drivers cracked the “magic” limit of 1:34 minutes.
Tom Kristensen in eighth place in only his second touring car outing. Kiesa’s team-mate Vanina Ickx also finished the final test session before qualifying with a good result: the Belgian lady racer claimed 17th place and outpaced the two 2004-spec Mercedes-Benz cars of Mathias Lauda and Susie Stoddart.
Technorati Tags: Audi, Audi A4, DTM, Mercedes-AMG, AMG, Zandvoort
Contrarily to the first test session, the second test of the DTM at Zandvoort was initially dominated by Mercedes-Benz. But at the half-time mark, the situation was different as Heinz-Harald Frentzen set a fastest time that none of the 19 other DTM drivers was able to match during the remaining 45 minutes. The driver from Mönchengladbach lapped the 4.307 kilometres long track in 1.34.487 minutes, almost three tenths of a second faster than Tomczyk in the morning session. After 90 minutes, second-placed Stefan Mücke was 0.415 seconds down with his AMG-Mercedes C-Class. Another eight thousandths of a second down, two times’ race winner Spengler was third. Starting off with second-placed Mücke, twelve drivers ranged within three tenths of a second behind the fastest man of the day.
In completely dry conditions, numerous drivers used the second DTM test for long runs in order to find the right set-up for the race on Sunday. The three Audi teams completed a lot of work in the early stages of the session. Pierre Kaffer only joined into the action after 30 minutes, but then, he made the best of the time he had left and claimed ninth place. Timo Scheider had to wait even longer before being able to go out: for him, the second test started only after 40 minutes. Eventually, he was twelfth. After a spin in the first test, there were problems with the floor section of Frank Stippler’s Audi A4 DTM. In the second test, the Audi-driver had lack of grip. “Stippi” had too much pick-up on his new tyres and the team investigated to find out the reason. After 21 laps, Stippler was 19th.
Bruno Sperngler and Mika Häkkinen caused a lot of work for the Mercedes-crew. The winner of the last two DTM races came off the track coming out of the Tarzan corner and had plenty of work trying to avoid a crash. His mechanics remained unfazed and checked the C-Class. After a spin in the second test, there was more work on Mika Häkkinen’s AMG-Mercedes C-Class. The HWA-crew not only removed the gravel that he had picked up, but also removed the entire floor section to give the car a complete service overhaul. With a few minutes remaining, Häkkinen got back on the track. Eventually, the two times’ Formula 1 World Champion was eighth.
The two seasoned title candidates, Tom Kristensen and Bernd Schneider, were well behind third-placed Bruno Spengler in the second test. 0.460 seconds down, Kristensen was seventh, Schneider was only 13th with a lap time of 1.35.202 minutes.
The first DTM test at the Circuit Park Zandvoort ended with five Audis on the first five places. Fastest driver of the brand with the four rings on Friday morning was Martin Tomczyk. The driver from Rosenheim set a fastest lap time of 1:34.758 minutes with his Audi A4 DTM on the 4.307 kilometres long track and was 0.027 seconds faster than Gary Paffett’s DTM lap record at the track. After 90 minutes of testing, his fellow-Audi driver Christian Abt was second with his one-year old car, exactly matching the lap record of 1:34.758 minutes. The Audi-dominance was completed by Tom Kristensen in third, Mattias Ekström in fourth and Timo Scheider in fifth position.
Fastest driver with a Mercedes-Benz was Bruno Spengler. The Canadian had been fourth behind the trio Kristensen, Ekström and Scheider for a long time, but then was pushed back into sixth after the fast lap times of Tomczyk and Abt. Spengler’s fastest lap time with the AMG-Mercedes C-Class was 1:35.497 minutes, 0.739 seconds slower than Tomczyk. Mika Häkkinen was seventh behind Nürburgring-winner Spengler.
Ranking eighth with his 2004-spec Audi, Nicolas Kiesa made it into the top 10 and placed ahead of stalwart Jean Alesi and Stefan Mücke, both driving 2005-spec AMG-Mercedes C-Classes. DTM record champion and points leader, Bernd Schneider, occupied 13th place. Alexandros Margaritis only racked up little mileage in testing, as he had to park his AMG-Mercedes C-Class in the pits after five laps and then watched testing action from the pit wall. “On the first lap, we were already having trouble with the steering”, the Greek explained.
