Backstretch Motorsports

Marco Werner’s affinity for street circuits shone again Friday. The Audi factory driver captured the overall pole position for Saturday’s Acura Sports Car Challenge of St. Petersburg presented by XM Satellite Radio with a record run, besting Penske Racing’s Romain Dumas as Audi looked to regain its winning ways in the American Le Mans Series.

Werner’s best lap was a 1:02.825 (103.144 mph) around the 1.8-mile, 14-turn circuit on the bayfront of St. Petersburg. His time also beat Dumas’ overall pole-winning time from 2007 by 0.214 seconds in the diesel-powered Audi R10 TDI he will share with Lucas Luhr.

And it could have been even better. Werner was on pace to improve his time on the next lap before running too hard into Turn 8 and spinning the car. The R10 did stop before impacting the tire barrier so there was no damage.

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Audi Takes LMP1 Class Win; O’Connell,Corvette Easily Win GT1
Flying Lizards Break Through with 1-2 GT2 Finish

If the grueling Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida is an indicator, the 2008 ALMS campaign will be another record book season for Penske Racing Porsce RS Spyders. Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Emmanuel Collard drove to an historic overall win at the 56th running of the American endurance classic.

Proving the computer simulations that show the LMP2 class to have a distinct advantage over their LMP1 counterparts, the lighter prototypes stole the thunder from the higher horsepower , heavier machines — the first overall win at Sebring by an LMP2 car that was further punctuated by four P2 lead-lap finishers, a race record. Dumas took the checkered flag by 12.979 seconds over Adrian Fernandez in the Lowe’s Fernandez Racing Acura ARX-01b he shared with Luis Diaz. The P2 class swept the overall podium with Dyson Racing’s Porsche RS Spyder of Butch Leitzinger, Marino Franchitti and Andy Lally placing third.

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Allan McNish (above) gave Audi pole position for Saturday’s 56th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida after the grid for the season-opening race for the American Le Mans Series was set by practice times. Because the prototype field had less than 10 minutes of green-flag qualifying time, the results from the session were disallowed.

As a result, McNish’s Audi R10 TDI will start on the inside front row based on his time of 1:43.195 (129.076 mph) in Thursday morning’s official practice session. He will start alongside the Peugeot 908 of Pedro Lamy, Nic Minassian and Stephane Sarrazin, which posted the second quickest time of the week at 1:44.27 (127.744 mph). Like the Audi, the Peugeot set its best time Thursday morning.

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The American Le Mans Series begins its 10th season with the 56th running of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida on Saturday, March 15 (10:00 am - 10:00 pm). It is arguably the most prestigious and historic endurance race in the Western Hemisphere.

The American Le Mans Series has become acclaimed as the Global Leader in Green Racing as both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in conjunction with SAE International have proclaimed the Series as the only racing series currently to meet is criteria for green racing. All cars that compete in the American Le Mans Series run on either clean diesel, E10 or cellulosic E85.

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