This Saturday’s Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach marks the final ALMS Long Beach race before next year’s merger with (takeover by?) Grand-Am as United SportsCar Racing. Just six years ago in 2007 we saw the last Champ Car race at Long Beach before open wheel racing reunification under the IndyCar brand. Somewhat ironically, that was also the first year that ALMS came to Long Beach.
The ALMS scene has changed rather remarkably since 2007. Back then we had only four classes: LMP1, LMP2, GT1, & GT2. Although the field of two Corvettes in GT1 pretty much played by themselves, GT2 was very competitive, and the LMP2 cars of Penske, Highcroft, Dyson, and Andretti Green could actually beat the LMP1 Audis on slow, tight courses like Long Beach. And that’s exactly what happened at ALMS Long Beach in 2007.
ALMS Long Beach 2007 – Prototype Classes
Penske Racing took the top two spots with the #7 LMP2 Porsche RS Spyder driven by Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard and the #6 driven by Sascha Maassen and Ryan Briscoe. Dumas and Bernhard would go on to win the LMP2 Drivers Championship that season. The Dyson Racing #16 RS Spyder driven by Butch Leitzinger and Andy Wallace took the third spot on the podium. The nearest LMP1 Audi Sport North America R10 TDI came in seventh, piloted by Dindo Capello and Allan McNish, who would go on to win the LMP1 Drivers Championship in 2007. The other Audi, driven by Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner, came in ninth. Pirro and Werner would be joined by Frank Biela to win Le Mans later that year. Other notable entries in the prototype classes at ALMS Long Beach that year included David Brabham driving for Highcroft Racing, Bryan Herta and Dario Franchitti driving for Andretti Green Racing, and Adrian Fernandez with Lowe’s Fernandez Racing.
ALMS Long Beach 2007 – GT Classes
As mentioned earlier, the GT1 class consisted entirely of the two Corvette Racing cars with the #4 Corvette C6.R driven by Oliver Gavin and Olivier Beretta taking the top spot both at Long Beach and for the season. GT2 was an entirely different story consisting of two Panoz Esperantes, three Ferrari F430s, and six Porsche 911 GT3s. Risi Competizione took first and third with the #62 Ferrari F430 driven by Mika Salo and Jaime Melo on the top spot and the #61 driven by Niclas Jonsson and Anthony Lazzaro taking third. Again, the winners at ALMS Long Beach, Salo and Melo, would go on to take the Drivers Championship. Between the two Ferraris were Darren Law and Patrick Long in the #44 Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche 911. Wolf Henzler and Robin Liddell drove a 911 to fourth for Tafel Racing. In fifth was the first of the Panoz Esperantes driven by Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand. Other interesting GT entries were Tim Bergmeister and Dirk Müller in the Petersen White Lightning Ferrari F430 (6th), Johannes van Overbeek and Jörg Bergmeister in the #45 Flying Lizard 911 (9th), Bryan Sellers in the second Panoz (DNF) and Tommy Milner in the Rahal Letterman Racing Porsche (DNF).
ALMS Long Beach 2013
The world economic collapse and tepid recovery in the intervening years have effected all of motorsports: Honda, Toyota, and BMW left F1; Peugeot left sportscar racing entirely from a position of great competitive strength in the Le Mans prototype class; and both IndyCar and ALMS have been affected by attempted cost containment.
Since 2007, ALMS has grown from four classes to five – adding a prototype spec class (PC), collapsing GT1 and GT2 into GT, and adding the Porsche GT3 Cup spec class (GTC). P1 is no longer the premier class attracting the Le Mans cars that it was back in 2007. The Le Mans LMP1 cars now run in the World Endurance Championship sanctioned by the FIA. Neither can the P2 cars beat the P1 cars any longer. This year’s ALMS Long Beach prototype field has three P1 cars, four P2 cars, and seven PC cars; back in 2007, there were eight LMP2 cars alone joined by another five LMP1 cars with the top seven prototypes finishing on the lead lap in a really competitive race. This year’s P1 teams are Muscle Milk Pickett Racing (HPD ARX-03a with HPD engine), Rebellion Racing (Lola B12/60 with Toyota engine), and Dyson Racing (Lola B12/60 with Mazda engine). P2 has two cars each from Extreme Speed Motorsports (who left GT for P2 since last year) and Level 5 Motorsports. All P2s are HPD ARX-03bs running HPD engines.
The GT class also looks dramatically different. And not just compared to 2007; big changes have happened just since last year. This year’s grid includes two Corvette C6 ZR1s, two Ferrari 458s, two Porsche 911s, two BMW Z4s, and two SRT Vipers. Corvette Racing are the stalwarts of GT coming off both team and driver championships in 2012. Risi Competizione returns in one of the Ferraris after a hiatus; they are a real asset to the class and the series. Flying Lizard Motorsports have left the GT class for the less costly GTC – perhaps to await a new GT3 RSR – after struggling in an aging 911 platform the last two years. The BMW M3s of Rahal Letterman Racing have been replaced by the Z4s. Team Falken Tire has picked up the baton as the leading Porsche GT team, while the SRT Vipers have returned to ALMS for a second year after more than a ten-year break. As mentioned earlier, the popular Extreme Speed Motorsports team traded their Ferrari 458s for P2 cars.
The final ALMS Long Beach race should be competitive across all five classes; I hope the finale is a good one!
The full entry list for ALMS Long Beach 2013 can be found here.
The entire Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend schedule is here.