• The American Le Mans Series held its fourth race of 1999 at Infineon Raceway (then Sears Point) on July 25. BMW recorded its first victory since a Series-opening victory at the 12 Hours of Sebring. JJ Lehto and Steve Soper beat the Panoz LMP-1 of David Brabham and Eric Bernard by 2.234 seconds for the overall victory. Lehto qualified on the overall pole position and recorded the fastest race lap.
• Olivier Beretta and David Donahue won their second straight GTS race for Viper Team ORECA and its factory Dodge Viper GTS-R. They finished a lap up on Corvette Racing’s Ron Fellows and Chris Kneifel with Beretta qualifying on pole and posting the fastest race lap.
• In GT, Hans Stuck and Boris Said gave BMW two victories on the weekend with a win in the BMW M3 over the Porsche of Dirk Mueller and Cort Wagner. Mueller recorded the class pole and fastest race lap as the two entries finished on the same lap.
• A total of 12 auto and chassis manufacturers (Acura, Aston Martin, Audi, Chevrolet, Creation, Dodge, Ford, Ferrari, Lola, Mazda, Panoz and Porsche) and as many as six tire manufacturers (Dunlop, Falken, Hankook, Kumho, Michelin and Yokohama) will be present on the grid at Mid-Ohio. BMW recently announced its return to factory GT2 racing in 2009.
• In Series history, 16 different chassis (Acura, Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Courage, Dodge, Ferrari, Lola, Panoz, Pilbeam, Porsche, Riley & Scott, Reynard, Saleen and Zytek) and 14 different engine marques (Acura, Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ferrari, Ford, Judd, Mazda, MG, Nissan, Porsche and Zytek) have scored victories.
• With his first win of 2008 at St. Petersburg, Corvette’s Olivier Beretta continues to hold the all-time American Le Mans Series record for career victories (38), six ahead of Audi’s Dindo Capello and Lime Rock GT1 winner Johnny O’Connell (32), Sascha Maassen and Oliver Gavin (29) and Timo Bernhard (28).
A year ago, Beretta became the first driver to win five (5) American Le Mans Series driver championships. The Monte Carlo, Monaco native has some fast and talented company nipping at his heels, including cockpit mate Oliver Gavin, who clinched his third straight driving title last year as well. The Beretta-Gavin pairing trails the Magnussen-O’Connell pairing in 2008 by twelve (12) points.
5 Olivier Beretta, GT1, 1999, 2000, 2005, 2006, 2007
3 Ron Fellows, GTS, 2002-04
Lucas Luhr, GT, 2002-03; LMP2, 2006
Sascha Maassen, GT, 2002-2003, LMP2, 2006
Allan McNish, LMP900/P1, 2000, 2006, 2007
Oliver Gavin, GT1, 2005, 2006, 2007
2 Timo Bernhard, GT, 2004, LMP2, 2007
Frank Biela, LMP1, 2002, 2005
Dindo Capello, LMP1, 2006, 2007
Emanuele Pirro, LMP1, 2001, 2005
Johnny O’Connell, GT1, 2003-2004
Marco Werner, LMP1, 2003-2004
- Bob Dickinson -
