Muscle Milk and BMW take ALMS wins

The Muscle Milk Lola-Aston Martin was a dominant overall winner of the American Le Mans Series' two-hour Long Beach race, while Joey Hand and Dirk Muller came out on top for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan-run BMW squad in the ultra-competitive GT field.

Lucas Luhr attacked and passed the pole-sitting Dyson Lola-Mazda during the opening lap, and although Chris Dyson stayed on the Aston-powered car's tail at first, Muscle Milk was soon striding away, with Luhr able to hand over to team-mate Klaus Graf with a comfortable lead, which Graf extended to a minute before the race ended under yellow following a GTC crash.

“I had the plan in my head to get around Chris in the first corner but he did a good job staying ahead,” Luhr said.  “But I could see I was quicker and made my move a few turns later. The car was good. We had some issues in the first practice and didn't do many laps. The car was running perfectly today.”

It is the second Long Beach overall win for Luhr, who qualified on the LMP1 pole and set the fastest lap of the race en route to a win for Audi Sport Team Joest in 2008. He compared the Aston favorably with that experience.

“Against the Audi with that huge amount of power and torque, the Aston Martin is quite easy to drive,” Luhr said. “It was easy to spin the Audi out of the hairpin. Your right foot had to be so much more sensible. The view from inside the (Lola-Aston Martin) is much better than I expected. But it's two completely different cars. The handling on the city circuit is better in the Aston Martin.” 

In GT, Hand made an early break by passing a couple of LMPC tailenders to give himself a buffer over the chasing pack. But this disappeared when Paul Gentilozzi crashed his Jaguar to bring out the first caution of the event five minutes in.

Shortly after the restart, Bill Auberlen in the second BMW lost third in class to Patrick Long's Flying Lizard Porsche, and was passed by several more cars while wrong-footed. As he tried to regain momentum, Auberlen tangled with Tommy Milner's Corvette and spun in the fountain section. It took a painfully long time to get the car turned and ready to resume – and just as he pulled away, Auberlen inadvertently badly blocked his class-leading teammate, who was about to put him a lap down. That allowed Corvette's Oliver Gavin and Long's Porsche to pass the BMW, but Hand reclaimed the lead shortly afterward with an amazing third-to-first move as the leaders lapped the GTC traffic.

“My eyes were popping out of my head but that's how street racing is,” Hand said. “The incident with Bill was interesting. I went to the right and he went to the right. It wasn't his fault because he couldn't see me.”

Long struck back a few laps later, repassing the BMW, only to then slide into the wall while dicing with Scott Sharp's Extreme Speed Ferrari, which had just pitted.

With Long's Porsche too badly damaged to continue, Muller was left with a relatively peaceful run to the finish ahead of the Gavin/Jan Magnussen Corvette. Jaime Melo and Toni Vilander brought the Risi Ferrari through to third from the back of the grid after a qualifying incident. Further back, Bruno Junqueira and Cristiano da Matta achieved a breakthrough sixth in the RSR Jaguar.

Gunnar Jeanette and Ricardo Gonzalez (Core) defeated Intersport's Tomy Drissi and Kyle Marcelli to take LMPC honors and third overall. The Black Swan car of Jeroen Bleekemolen and Bill Pappas clinched the GTC win again.