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ALMS Celebrates Second Decade and 100th Race - UPDATED
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by Edmund Jenks | March 21, 2009 at 07:30 am
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American Le Mans Series Celebrates Second Decade and 100th Race
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To many, after the merger of the ChampCar World Series into the IndyCar Series, the American Le Mans Series hold the cultural legacy that once surrounded the CCWS.
The full bodied, but very fast, American Le Mans Series cars see the green flag drop on their 100th race led by the reigning ICS Champion, Scott Dixon driving for de Ferran Motorsports in the team's Acura-Powered LMP 1.
Dixon had a quick lap of 1 minute, 45.278 seconds (126.522 mph) on the 3.7-mile circuit in Sebring, Fla. to secure the pole position.
GREEN FLAG AT SEBRING FOR 100TH RACE! Second decade of American Le Mans Series under way The 100th American Le Mans Series race is under way with Acura, Audi and Peugeot leading the way to the green flag for the 57th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida.
It sets up for a fantastic 12 Hours with Mazda, Corvette, Porsche, Ferrari, Panoz and others taking the green flag.
America’s greatest sports car race can be heard on XM Channel 242 as well as Sirius Channel 126. The broadcast will air from 10 a.m to noon and 9 to 11 p.m. ET on Saturday.
XM serves as the primary sponsor of de Ferran Motorsports’ new Acura ARX-02a prototype. Team owner Gil de Ferran will drive the LMP1 entry with Simon Pagenaud and Scott Dixon
The Sebring 12 Hours will air live on both XM and Sirius this weekend.The 57th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida will air on satellite radio Saturday with American Le Mans Radio’s John Hindhaugh providing play-by-play coverage of the opening round of the 2009 American Le Mans Series.
America’s greatest sports car race can be heard on XM Channel 242 as well as Sirius Channel 126. The broadcast will air from 10 a.m to noon and 9 to 11 p.m. ET on Saturday.
XM serves as the primary sponsor of de Ferran Motorsports’ new Acura ARX-02a prototype. Team owner Gil de Ferran will drive the LMP1 entry with Simon Pagenaud and Scott Dixon.
The Sebring 12 Hours will open the 11th season of the American Le Mans Series and serve as the 100th all-time Series race. SPEED will televise the race live from 10 a.m. to noon and 2-11 p.m. ET. American Le Mans Radio and Live Timing & Scoring will be available at americanlemans.com.
... notes from The EDJE
(ht: ALMS)
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at 07:01 on March 22nd, 2009
UPDATE:
This excerpted and edited from autosport.com -
Audi wins Sebring on R15's debut
By Matt Beer Sunday, March 22nd 2009, 02:31 GMT
Audi's new R15 TDI took victory on its debut in the Sebring 12 Hours, as Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello came out on top of a spectacular race-long battle with Peugeot.
The result makes Kristensen the first man to win Sebring five times.
Franck Montagny, Sebastien Bourdais and Stephane Sarrazin had to settle for second place in the best of the 908 HDi FAPs, failing to match McNish's pace in the final sprint.
To complete a near-perfect start to the R15's career, Mike Rockenfeller, Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner brought the #1 Audi home third.
Apart from a brief period when Bourdais managed to give Peugeot a half-minute lead, the top two cars ran just seconds apart until the Formula 1 driver picked up a puncture when running a close second to Kristensen with three hours to go.
Reference Here>>
Note: Sebastien Bourdais is a three time champion of the open-wheel ChampCar World Series (CCWS), and Franck Montagny placed on the podium at second in the final CCWS race held ... Long Beach in 2008 (the interesting thing about that race, it was the only CCWS race that awarded IndyCar Series 2008 season points)
What happened to the de Ferran Motorsports Acura that secured the pole position with IndyCar Champion Scott Dixon?
Acura was unable to take the fight to the diesels in the race. The De Ferran car was swiftly shuffled back to fifth in the early laps, and retired with suspension problems eight hours in. The Highcroft Acura was delayed by a couple of incidents in the first half of the race, before eventually being halted by a transmission glitch two hours from the end.
Although Scott Dixon put the De Ferran Acura on pole, both it and the sister Highcroft entry failed to match the diesel Audi and Peugeots' pace in the 12 Hours.
While Highcroft fell back after two accidents before retiring with transmission problems, the De Ferran car managed to stay in fourth place until being stopped by a suspension breakage.
Team boss Gil de Ferran was satisfied with his car's times prior to the failure.
"We are a little disappointed we didn't make it to the chequered flag," he admitted. "But I felt good about our performance today. We proved that the Acura is the best handling car out there today.
"The track was coming to us as the race progressed. We stayed on the lead lap until we had a couple of unscheduled pitstops."
Highcroft's David Brabham pointed out that the car was still at a very early stage in its development.
(ht: autosport.com)