Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Petit Le Mans postscript

Well it only took me a fortnight to finally sit down and watch the videotape I’d recorded of this year’s American Le Mans Series race at Road Atlanta while I’d been busy on Holiday in Hopkins, MN.

And I have to say it was a pretty enjoyable event, although I was rooting for the lone French Bleu Peugeot 908 HDI turbo diesel to beat the mighty Audi R10 turbo diesel’s... Although two of the Peugeot’s were expected, one was heavily damaged in a previous European Le Mans Series event and thus the team only shipped one racecar to Georgia.

Yet, it was a momentous scrum towards the final stages of the race, when former Formula One ace Allan McNish showed off his massive Sports Car experience by hunting down the leading Peugeot of Christian Klien, whom apparently got quite a scare when trying to repass McNish in the dark of night at 194mph and not realizing that there was a kink in the piece of tarmac they were hurtling towards.

Yet, it was indeed ironic that McNish had the buffer of ex-Toyota Formula 1 teammate Mika Salo in the GT2 Risi Competizione Ferrari 430 as a buffer between BMW Sauber F1 test driver Klien as they set about the races final restart, in which McNish drove masterfully and scored a very impressive victory for Audi after having crashed his car on the warm-up lap and beginning the race two laps down...

Race Report