ALMS Report: Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series - Long Beach, CA

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Horsepower is nice but torque is better. Especially if you have gobs of it at your disposal in an Audi R10/TDI. Everyone, meaning much of the racing media, firmly believed the powerful but relatively cumbersome P1 Audis would be playing second fiddle to the P2 Porsches and Acuras on the streets of Long Beach, California. And for the first hour or so that’s how the race proceeded. But the acceleration of the Audi diesels down the straight was clearly awesome. It looked like all they needed to do was get close enough to the leading Dumas / Bernhard Porsche RS Spyder coming on the straight and put the hammer down. A series of yellow flag incidents helped keep the field tight and finally, an hour and 20 minutes into the race, Marco Werner got the nose of his #2-P1 Audi AG R10/TDI in front of Romain Dumas going into turn 8 and closed the door on the #7-P2 Porsche RS Spyder, to take the race lead. Only ten minutes later the #1 Audi also overpowered the class leading Romain Dumas / Timo Bernhard Porsche to take second overall. Pundit predictions not withstanding, the super diesels were now 1,2 at Long Beach, trailed by a ferocious battle between David Brabham in the #9-P2 Acura ARX-01B and the #7-P2 Porsche RS Spyder. After trading paint for a couple corners Brabham just got by Dumas before the checkered flag.

Audi was delighted with their 1,2 sweep in P1. The Scott Sharp / David Brabham Acura ARX-01B won the P2 class. Jan Magnussen, and Johnny O'Connell’s Corvette C6.R took GT1 honors and Dominik Farnbacher with Dirk Mueller in the Ferrari F430 GT fought hard to beat the Flying Lizard Motorsports' Porsches for the GT2 win.

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Comments

Ducati Minor

Sucks I wasn't one of the seven spectators at the event.

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