The sanctioning body for GT1 class has had it in for Corvette Racing this year, and finally at Lime Rock on Saturday it pays off for Aston Martin. With a string of 12 consecutive wins, Corvette Racing is the dominant team. Over the last few years champions and challengers alike (Viper and Ferrari) have fallen to Corvette Racing. This year, in a bid to make the GT1 class more competitive, the sanctioning body of the ALMS is attempting to level the playing field by making changes to Corvette Racing’s car setup, most notably weight. In March at Sebring, the first race this year, the weight for the #3 and #4 Corvettes were required to be an additional 122 pounds heavier. Following the stunning win at LeMans, the longest track on the ALMS Tour, Corvette Racing’s Corvettes were required to be an additional 199 pounds heavier, have smaller intake restrictors and a smaller fuel tank capacity than its rivals when racing at Lime Rock on Saturday, the shortest and one of the most congested, technical tracks on the circuit. And despite these sanctions, the #3 Corvette finished in second place with only 0.33 separating them from the GT1 Class Winning 009 Aston Martin DBR. I don’t wish to take anything away from Aston Martin’s win at Lime Rock, but image the #3 Corvette being nearly 200 pounds lighter and maybe one less pit stop due to a smaller fuel tank and you get the picture. This should have been a win. Carbon Fiber body panels and a hydroformed steel chassis drops the weight of the Corvette C6.R to an astonishing 2,425 pounds (500 pounds less than the 2006 Corvette Z06). Millions of dollars have been spent by General Motors and Corvette Racing in developing the kind of advanced racing machine that wins 12 straight races. And then when it dominates, it is punished in the “spirit of competition”. Competition breeds success. Competition makes not only the champions better, but the challengers as well. Imagine the NFL telling a team that their wide receivers were too fast and then required them to wear five pound ankle weights during the game. Changes the game. Maybe not a lot, but 0.33 seconds is enough.
Technorati Tags: Corvette | Racing | ALMS

Holiday traffic was heavy today at Lime Rock Park in the fourth round of the American Le Mans Series, with hard contact and close calls the order of the day in the New England Grand Prix. Corvette Racing’s bid for a record 13th consecutive victory in the GT1 class came up just short in a photo finish between the No. 3 Compuware Corvette C6.R and the No. 009 Aston Martin DBR9. Aston Martin driver Pedro Lamy edged Corvette star Johnny O’Connell by .033-second at the stripe. It was the first race since March 2005 that Corvette Racing had to settle for the second spot on the podium. “He had me by two feet, but with another lap or two we might have got him,” said O’Connell. “The guys on the No. 3 Corvette crew have been working so hard and I really wanted to get them a win. This is a very busy race track, but it was a fun battle and we raced each other clean.” “It was crazy out there – as crazy as I’ve ever seen it,” said O’Connell’s teammate Ron Fellows, who drove the first one-hour, 41-minute stint. “That’s typical of Lime Rock. I was a tick quicker than the Aston in a couple of areas, but not quick enough to take a shot at him.” The two-hour, 45-minute race on the roller coaster 1.54-mile circuit was punctuated by frequent contact and three full-course caution periods. The first incident was the result of Dyson Racing’s LMP1 prototype making an optimistic passing attempt in Turn 3 on Olivier Beretta in the No. 4 Compuware Corvette C6.R. The prototype pushed the Corvette off the track, and both cars ended up in the guardrail, mired in mud.”The car was flying and I was pushing hard to catch the leaders,” Beretta reported. “I was trying to do my job and an accident happened. I turned into the corner and straight away I felt a car there. He touched me and I went off on the grass. My main concern was the steering. The crew did a terrific job as usual to get the car back on the track.” It took eight minutes for the track workers to extricate the wounded Corvette from the muck, and 17 minutes later the C6.R was back on the track with a new front end and Oliver Gavin behind the wheel. “The crew had to change the nose, change the engine undertray, and replace a broken tie rod end,” reported team manager Gary Pratt. “We cleaned off the mud, changed the tires, and the car was back going again.” That accident ended the bid of Beretta and Gavin to extend their record-setting winning streak to nine consecutive victories. “We’ve had some luck for the last eight races, and it ran out today,” said Gavin. “It was just not our day. I was impressed with how the boys got the car back out there. We completed the required 70 percent of the laps, earned some points, and now it’s on to the next race.” The race for the GT1 title was another pitched battle between the Aston Martin and Corvette camps, with the three frontrunners locked in combat on the same lap for the entire race. Fellows took the lead on the start, passing pole sitter Darren Turner’s Aston Martin. At the 10-minute mark, Beretta and Aston Martin driver Stephane Sarrazin made contact in Turn 1 and both spun. After one hour and 19 minutes of flat-out racing, Fellows and Sarrazin swept past Turner on the inside of Turn 1. Following the final round of pit stops and driver changes, O’Connell took second place from Tomas Enge with eight minutes remaining, and then narrowed Lamy’s margin from 3.7 seconds to a fender length at the finish. The Corvettes were carrying 199 more pounds than the Aston Martins, running smaller intake restrictors, and using smaller fuel tanks as a result of “balance of performance” adjustments mandated by the sanctioning body. “At some point in time we knew that the 200 pounds and the restrictor would be too much to overcome, and today turned out to be that day,” said Corvette Racing program manager Doug Fehan. “It was certainly one hell of a battle, and it’s a good thing for Aston Martin that the race wasn’t about four feet longer. I think the fans got their money’s worth today.” Corvette Racing’s next event is the inaugural Utah Grand Prix at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City on July 13-15. The fifth round of the 10-race ALMS will be televised tape-delayed by CBS Sports on Sunday, July 15, starting at 2 p.m. EDT.
Technorati Tags: Corvette | Racing | ALMS

Crew chief Dan Binks’ final instructions to driver Ron Fellows before the start of qualifying were succinct: “Have fun out there.” When Fellows returned to the Corvette Racing pits after taking the second spot on the GT1 grid for Saturday’s New England Grand Prix, his report was equally brief. “Guys, that was fun!” he radioed to the crew of the No. 63 Compuware Corvette C6.R. “The car was great.” Fellows’ lap of the 1.54-mile Lime Rock Park road course in 50.491 seconds fell just .219 seconds short of Darren Turner’s pole-winning time in the No. 007 Aston Martin DBR9. Olivier Beretta ran the third quickest qualifying lap at 50.873 seconds in the No. 4 Compuware Corvette C6.R. Pedro Lamy was fourth fastest at 50.905 in the No. 009 Aston Martin DBR9, joining the qualifying session late after an off-course excursion into a bog left by the torrential rain that has inundated New England. “I had a good, fun lap,” Fellows reported. “The car has been working very well since we rolled it onto the track for the first lap of practice. I don’t know if I could have gone quicker, but I sure would have liked another lap and taken a crack at it. “It’s amazing how fast this Corvette is here,” he added. “I still hold the track record in Trans Am from back in 1995, and it’s a 50.2 . . . and that’s without a chicane. Here we are going almost that fast with the chicane!”As a result of performance adjustments imposed by the sanctioning body last week, the Corvettes are now 199 pounds heavier than their Aston Martin rivals and have a 10-liter smaller fuel capacity. “I was quite pleased that Corvettes’ qualifying times pretty well matched the times from last year because the cars are in a significantly different configuration,” said Corvette Racing program manager Doug Fehan. “That’s a testament to the hard work that the Corvette Racing team has done. If anything surprised me, it was that the Astons weren’t a bit quicker with the advantage that they now have. “Lime Rock is a great circuit on which to race – it’s bumpy, it’s fast, and there are some very challenging corners,” Fehan noted. “You can’t make a pit stop in the time it takes to complete a lap, so anything can happen on race day.” Fresh from a GT1 class victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Olivier Beretta was still making the adjustment from the longest track on the schedule to the shortest. Beretta and his teammate Oliver Gavin will be racing for their ninth straight ALMS victory on Saturday. “This feels like a go-kart track after driving on a super track like Le Mans,” said Beretta. “Ron did a very good lap time, so congratulations to him. The important thing was not to damage the car, and that is the target for the race. Now we have to see what happens in the race, and I’m feeling confident.” The New England Grand Prix, the fourth round of the 10-race 2006 American Le Mans Series, will start at 3 p.m. EDT on Saturday, July 1. The race will be televised tape-delayed by CBS Sports on Sunday, July 2, at 4 p.m. EDT.
Technorati Tags: Corvette | Racing | ALMS