24h Le Mans
Spectators at the Laguna Seca circuit in California were able to attend not one but two races this weekend as the LM PC and GTD (GT Daytona) cars took the track first before leaving room a few hours later for the Prototypes and GTLM cars.
Photo : Richard PRINCE - Corvette Racing
After the first pole cinched yesterday by an LM P2 car, then the first victory. Indeed, starting from the pole position, the No. 2 HPD ARX-03b-Honda of Extreme Speed Motorsports crossed the Mazda Raceway finish line, better known as Laguna Seca, in first position thanks to a solid showing by Ed Brown and Johannes van Overbeek.
Fifteen minutes from the end of the two-hour race, Johannes van Overbeek overtook Jordan Taylor in the No. 10 Corvette DP of Wayne Taylor Racing, to take the lead and not relinquish it. This result follows a performance rebalancing between the Daytona Prototypes, victorious in the first two rounds of the 2014 season, and the LM P2 cars, joined together in the same class called Prototype. The Taylor brothers finished in second place, just ahead of the No. 1 Riley-Ford of Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett, winners of the 12 Hours of Sebring.
In GTLM, the Corvette Racing team won for the second time in a row, after Long Beach, thanks to Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen. The Spanish driver passed Giancarlo Fisichella and the Ferrari 458 Italia of Risi Competizione to take the lead twenty minutes from the end of the race. In the end it was the No. 55 BMW Z4 of RLL finishing second after a fierce battle with the Porsche 911 of Nick Tandy. Tandy could not avoid making contact with the BMW and was assessed a 60-second penalty after the race which would relegate him to ninth place, leaving third place to the Ferrari of Risi Competizione.
At the first race, the Formula Le Mans of the Starworks Motorsports team, victorious in the LM P2 class at Le Mans in 2012, dominated the 8Star Motorsports outfit, while over in GTD, the BMW Z4 of Turner Motorsport passed under the checkered flag first after running out of fuel in the famous Corkscrew during the last lap...
All of the TUSC competitors will meet again on May 31st at Detroit for the last round before the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in which certain teams will participate.
Cécile Bonardel / ACO - Translation by Nikki Ehrhardt / ACO
