|
Tooele, Utah,
USA.
Sunday, 18th May, 2008.
ALMS Round 4: Miller Motorsports Park,
Salt Lake City
Following the
closest ever qualifying session in the
history of the American Le Mans Series where
the top 10 cars spanned 1.30 seconds, it set
the scene for what promised to be a very
hard fought race on the 3.046 mile course
set in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains
at the Miller Motorsports Park just outside
Salt Lake City in Utah. The #20 LMP 2 Dyson
Racing Porsche RS Spyder was qualified by
Butch Leitzinger and took up 7th place on
the grid, just 0.633 seconds off the pole
sitting LMP2 Penske Porsche RS Spyder of
Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard. The #16
sister Dyson car was down in 10th place, a
further half second off pole.
Butch started the race, but after only 25
minutes the first full course yellow saw
several cars dart into the pits promoting
the #20 car up to 3rd place overall. However
just 10 minutes later the situation was to
change yet again when 2 of the Acura LMP2
cars became embroiled in an incident causing
a lengthy caution under yellows. Several
cars utilised this opportunity to pit
including the #20 Dyson Porsche, only to
rejoin the race 11th overall. Despite
steadily regaining places Butch pushed a
little too hard and went off course only to
be spun by the chasing Lowes Acura driven by
Adrian Fernandez.
Marino took up the chase in the #20 Dyson
Porsche around the middle of the race
and rapidly settled into a fast rhythm
pushing hard. It didn’t long before Marino
was
up into 4th place overall trying to close on
the front running Penske Porsches and the
LMP2 Acura of Gil de Ferran making it’s
debut in the ALMS at this event. Try as hard
as he could and despite making inroads into
the time gap, he was trying to chase down
the fastest cars on the track, and despite
matching their times and setting the fastest
lap time in the Dyson team, Marino was only
able to chip away a few seconds by the time
the chequered flag fell.
“I have to say my overall reaction to the
race is one of disappointment that we didn’t
get a podium because we had a car that was
capable of getting us there this
weekend” said Marino. “The Dyson Racing
strategy was spot on, and Butch did a
great job, but unfortunately got tagged by
Fernandez. We made great progress all
weekend, our times were competitive with the
leaders, it’s just a great shame we
didn’t get the result that we were clearly
capable of achieving. The gap to the next
round at Lime Rock gives us a great
opportunity to do some testing and hopefully
that will give us an advantage when we
resume our battles with the Acuras and
Penske Porsches in July”.
The fifth round of the American Le Mans
Series will be held at Lime Rock Park in
Connecticut on Saturday, 12th July, 2008.
ENDS
Press enquiries: Kaye Wilson, Tel: +44 1753
842 322; UK Mob: +44 7785 227 772
US Mob: + 1 954 614 9836
Print
|
