American Le Mans Series: Road America
– Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (August 11, 2013) – Orion Energy Systems 245
The sixth round of the American Le Mans Series took place just three weeks after an amazing race weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park where we saw a hard fought win in the P2 class for Level 5 Motorsports (Tucker/M. Franchitti) over Extreme Speed Motorsports (Cosmo/Sharp). Not to mention the epic GT class battle between Corvette Racing (Gavin/Milner) to the checkered flag versus SRT Motorsports (Goossens/Farnbacher), as well as the P1 class leading Muscle Milk Pickett Racing (Graf/Luhr) victory over Dyson Racing (Burgess/McMurry). The mood coming into Road America this past weekend was exciting to say the least. After the last race, expectations were high.
Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin is a 4.048-mile asphalt track with 14 turns. The American Le Mans Series made its first visit to Road America on July 7, 2002, and is a favorite track for drivers in all classes. The combination of high-speed straights, heavy braking zones, fast sweeping corners, and a variety of elevation changes, provides great racing for drivers and fans alike. This is also the second fastest track in the series, and home to the closest finish ever (just 0.083 seconds) in ALMS history at the 2012 Road America race.
Drivers have many challenges here at Road America. With the combination of varied turns and long straights, the teams must decide to either dial in down force for fast cornering, or trim the car out for the fastest speeds on the straights. Many drivers find their cars' top speed here at Road America. In addition, with the 4-mile length, fuel mileage and pit strategy comes into play more at Road America than most other tracks.
The first look at how cars and drivers stacked up was during Friday morning practice.
The fastest time posted in the P1 Class was by Lucas Luhr in the #6 Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a with a time of 1:53.270.
