ALMS: Muscle Milk, Conquest, ESM Win at Mosport

The American Le Mans Series Grand Prix of Mosport was a typical ALMS race, which is to say, the entire event was filled with close racing, multiple class lead changes, and bold overtaking maneuvers.

Mosport offered up an added fillip: an eleven-minute shootout ending after a late-race yellow flag which brought the field together.

Muscle Milk Pickett Racing came away with its fourth overall win in a row in P1; Conquest Endurance got its first win in P2.

GT was a non-stop brawl with Johannes van Overbeek eventually getting the win for Extreme Speed Motorsports its first win. Eventually, because the car finished second behind Jörg Bergmeister’s Flying Lizard Porsche, which was later disqualified for failing a stall test.

RSR Racing got its first PC win after Kyle Marcelli in the Merchant Services Oreca spun out in the closing minutes, and GTC went to TRG.

Muscle Milk Marches On

Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr showed again that Muscle Milk is the class of the American Le Mans Series, winning yet again in the high-speed, high-tech P1 class in the #06 HPD-ARX 03a Honda.

Graf qualified on the pole, Luhr led almost all of the first half of the 2-hour-45-minute event, and Graf led the entire second half, holding off the two Dyson Lola Mazdas.
 
The win was something of a birthday gift to the two drivers from themselves; Graf turned 43 on the 21st, and Luhr, 33 on race day. Luhr drove with an injured ankle, twisted during the team’s birthday celebration, but it didn’t show in his performance.

Chris Dyson managed to take the lead in the #16 Dyson Lola Mazda but he was later adjudged to have jumped the start and had to give the position back. Once Luhr got in front, he drove away.

Some people had speculated that Luhr had deliberately slowed just before the green flag, to force Chris Dyson to lift, so Luhr could then get a jump. The Muscle Milk driver gave a different explanation.

“I didn’t see the green and didn’t hear it on the radio,” Luhr explained. “I was just about to accelerate and I looked to the left and [Chris] Dyson was by me. We’ve seen it before in the past, that he is a little optimistic on the starting procedure but it worked out for us in the end.

“I was following him very closely; I was thinking it was just a matter of time before I got by him. You could see it clearly once I got by him, I was able to build a big gap. I was a little bit upset on the radio at first but then we were fully in control of the race and made a good call strategy wise which allowed us to do the race on only two stops versus others that did three.

Muscle Milk could have gone faster, but chose to conserve a bit and use a two-stop strategy. Dyson racing split its strategy, bringing in one car during the first caution and then hoping for a wave-around for that car under the second caution. Muscle Milk foiled those plans by not pitting.

This was a risky move, but the team felt that they could open enough of a gap to pit from the lead and maintain track position before the fuel ran out. The strategy worked perfectly; the second Dyson car never caught up.

Graf and Luhr drove a flawless race, but the Muscle Milk team put too many people over the pit wall during the team’s final pit stop, and were assessed a stop-plus-20-second penalty. The Muscle Milk machine was far enough ahead not to lose its position in the lead, which shows emphatically how dominant this car was.

Muscle Milk has the HPD perfectly sorted, while the Dyson crew has struggled all year to get the tires working on the Lola-Mazda. The team’s lead car, driven by Chris Dyson and Guy Smith, started working towards the end of the race, but still couldn’t match the Muscle Milk HPD.

A stop for a splash of fuel under the final caution ruined Dyson’s chances to fight for the overall lead, but the car still finished second.

“The car was good at the end,” said co-driver Guy Smith in a Dyson Racing statement. “We made a lot of changes throughout the race with tire splits and tire combinations. When I got in the car, it felt pretty good—certainly the best it has been all weekend.

“After the restart on the last yellow, we were forty seconds behind. Then they said I was twenty-five behind and then fifteen seconds. I kept on pushing because you want to be there to take advantage of any problems they may have at the end.”

That final stint gives Dyson racing reason to hope that they might find their 2011-championship-winning form for the last few races of the 2012 season.

Conquest Conquers in P2

Two cars which were working perfectly and being driven excellently were the P2 machines of Conquest Endurance and Level 5 Motorsports. These are Pro-Am cars, with amateur drivers which drive like pros. Conquest’s Michael Heinemeier-Hansen and Level 5’s Scott Tucker battled tremendously through the first half of the race, nose-to-tail and wheel-to-wheel.

Both cars received penalties: the Conquest Morgan-Nissan for passing under the first yellow flag, and the Level 5 HPD for a pit-lane-speeding violation when they made their driver change. Conquest was able to make up the lost time at the second caution; Level 5 did the same at the final caution.

This set up an-11-lap shootout between pro drivers Martin Plowman in the Conquest Morgan-Nissan and Christophe Bouchut Level 5 HPD ARX 03b-Honda turbo.

Bouchut, starting behind Plowman, got overly aggressive getting through traffic. The Level 5 driver went three-wide, using the pit lane to get around the #20 Dyson and the #11 JDX Porsche, which earned him a stop-and-go penalty. There was no way to make up the lost time in the remaining ten laps; Conquest took its first ALMS class win since starting in the Series at Sebring.  

“It feels amazing to get our first win,” Heinemeier-Hansen said in a Conquest press release. “We put all the pieces of the puzzle together, we had great pit stop, a great car, and just executed flawlessly.

“It was really fun racing Scott Tucker out there; I don’t think I’ve ever had that close of a dogfight in P2 before. It seems like in endurance racing in general things tend to spread out, but here we had the same strategy and very similar pace and we had a great fight.

“I’m very happy for the team and I’m ready to get more wins!”

“The caution came out and when I looked in my mirrors I realized that he [Bouchut] would be right behind me on the restart, which is the last thing I wanted,” Plowman explained. “On the restart I just drove like a bat out of hell and passed a bunch of cars to get away from him. He eventually got a penalty and that gave us a pretty comfortable gap. The last few laps were nerve-racking, but I just focused on bringing it home and making sure we got our first win.”

Van Overbeek Gets ESM’s First After Lizard Doesn’t Stall

GT as always was a non-stop battle, this time between Corvette, Porsche, and Ferrari. Flying Lizard, which seemed finally to find some speed at Lime Rock after struggling since Sebring, was back up front at Mosport.

The #45 Flying Lizard Porsche came on later in the race. The early laps belonged to Corvette, with the BMWs in pursuit. But the BMWs didn’t do so well at the end of their tire stints, and the #4 Vette lost a lot of time with an early drivetrain failure.

Bergmeister took the class lead on lap 54, with Scott Sharp in the #01 ESM right behind him. Antonio Garcia in the #3 Corvette passed Dirk Mueller’s #56 BMW on lap 63. After pits stops on lap 75, the order was Bergmeister, Magnusson now in the Vette, and Joey Hand third in the BMW. On lap 78 Johannes van Overbeek in the #01 ESM got by Hand, and that set the top three in GT for the rest of the race.  

When the final yellow flag waved, there were no gaps to close up. The top three GT cars had been lapping nose-to-tail already—less than half a second between Bergmeister and Magnusson, with the ESM Ferrari, which had often fast but not successful, a few seconds behind the #3 Vette.

Bergmeister made his Porsche as wide as possible without blocking; Magnusson did everything but nudge Bergmeister to get by. Van Overbeek hung back, ready to pounce, until the final lap, when his opportunity developed. Magnusson, trying too hard to find a way to get a run on Bergmeister, left a few too many inches open on the inside of Turn 54a, and van Overbeek wasted no time thrusting through.

The final margins tell the story: Bergmeister crossed the line .31 seconds ahead of van Overbeek, who had Jan Magnusson just .47 seconds behind him. Flying Lizard, after a season of frustration, had won its second race in a row—almost.

One part of post-race tech inspection is the Stall test, where a car’s air intakes are blocked, choking the engine. Since different cars’ performance levels are balanced by restricting airflow, any extra air getting to the engine means more power, and a penalty. The Flying Lizard didn’t stall.

This gave the win to driver/owner Scott Sharp and co-driver Johannes van Overbeek art Extreme Speed Motorsports, the team’s first win since debuting in 2011. Mosport was van Overbeek’s 100th ALMS start, so the win was a nice anniversary present.

“This isn’t exactly how we envisioned our first win happening, but we’ll take it,” Sharp said on the ESM website. “We had a strong Ferrari today and it kept getting better as the race went on. We certainly had a winning effort today. The entire team has worked tirelessly over the last three years to get us to podium finishes and wins.

“This is the start of wins for ESM. It can only go up from here.”

“There were three of us running in a train. Getting to them and getting around them was a whole different story,” said van Overbeek. “I had a bad aero push and I knew that was the only shot, in 5a and 5b, to get around the Corvette. I did the Hail Mary on the last lap and it worked out. I can’t wait for Mid-Ohio now.

“Although I feel for Pat and Jörg [Flying Lizard drivers Long and Bergmeister], I couldn’t be happier for Scott, Ed, ESM and Patrón. After the podium the race just didn’t feel over; and as it turned out it wasn’t.
“Winning at Mosport caps a great weekend and it was a fine way to celebrate my 100th start in this dynamic and competitive series. I hope it’s a sign of things to come.”

The American Le Mans Series will be back in action on Saturday, August 4 with the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge. Thursday is reserved for testing with practice and qualifying on Friday. Tickets can be purchased through the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course website.

The race starts at 1:05 p.m. EDT. It will be streamed live on ESPN3 and broadcast starting at 2 p.m. on ABC. Qualifying will also be streamed on ESPN3.

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