Peugeot scores Petit Le Mans victory

In LMP Challenge, Ryan Lewis' late pass of Kyle Marcelli on the final restart netted PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports its second win of 2011. Lewis co-drove with gentlemen drivers Henri Richard and Ken Dobson, who more than punched above their weight in their stints. Marcelli's teammates Tomy Drissi and Chapman Ducote did their best but were understandably hard-pressed to keep pace with their blindingly quick Canadian co-driver.

The two young lions in the class both starred on a day when the championship contenders ran into issues. Ultimately, it ended in a draw.

The class has co-champions with Gunnar Jeannette and Ricardo Gonzalez of CORE autosport and Genoa Racing's Eric Lux dead even on 151 points through all series tiebreakers. Each had two wins, two seconds, thirds and fourths and one fifth!

In this race, Genoa stopped on track a couple times while CORE had both an off-course excursion early and later power steering issues. CORE's sister car was taken out in traffic in the final half hour, which opened the door for Genoa to advance to fourth in class, one spot behind CORE's leading car.

“I'm actually really excited we shared a championship with them,” Lux said. “In LMPC and the other challenge class, some might shrug it off, but it's some of the best racing in the series right now. At the end of the day, we're all racers and we want to have intense battles, and this was one of those today and this season.”

“Racing isn't hockey, and you usually don't want to end in a tie,” Jeannette said. “All that aside, I have to say it's been a fantastic year driving with Ricardo and being a part of the CORE autosport organization. It was a steep learning curve, seeing the team progress from Sebring to now being part of the team that is the sole champion in the team championship.”

In GT, AF Corse took the class win with Gianmaria Bruni, Giancarlo Fisichella and Pierre Kaffer aboard the No. 51 Ferrari F458 Italia. The story here though was second placed-Flying Lizard Motorsports, as a late pass by Jorg Bergmeister on Dirk Werner's BMW netted Michelin the GT tire manufacturer championship over Dunlop. BMW still secured the driver, team and manufacturer titles.

Bruni passed the BMWs when they were still in contention for the class race win, but several punctures otherwise blighted their day.

Corvette finished fourth with its No. 4 car driven by Oliver Gavin, Jan Magnussen and Richard Westbrook, securing the runner-up spot in the championship for Gavin and Magnussen. Team Falken Tire posted its best endurance race result to date in fifth with Bryan Sellers, Wolf Henzler and Martin Ragginger aboard the team's No. 17 Porsche.

The two Extreme Speed Ferrari F458s deserved better than sixth and 10th-place results after running in the top three most of the race, but at least they could say they fared better than Risi Competizione. Risi ran out of fuel the last lap last year while leading, but didn't even start in 2011 following a warm-up accident, leaving Jaime Melo, Toni Vilander and Raphael Matos sidelined.

Tim Pappas took the GTC class title with another win for Black Swan Racing, again driving with Jeroen and Sebastiaan Bleekemolen. It was the team's fifth this season, and gave Pappas his second class championship in as many seasons.

Other class winners were American-based, ILMC-entered Level 5 Motorsports (LMP2, Scott Tucker, Christophe Bouchut, Joao Barbosa) and Krohn Racing (GTE Am, Nic Jonsson, Tracy Krohn, Michele Rugolo). Both classes were largely devoid of drama as competitors fell by the wayside; the Level 5 car won by eight laps in class while Krohn won by two.

ALMS full-season champions Dyson Racing with its No. 16 Lola Mazda and the No. 56 BMW clinched the season-long Michelin GREEN X Challenge championships and earned auto-invites to next year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, an added caveat to both of their seasons.