Graf Prevails In ALMS Four Hour Enduro

Road America, Elkhart Lake, WI – Close finishes in both the LMP1 and GT classes highlighted the tenth running of the American LeMans Series presented by Tequila Patron Time Warner Road Race Showcase Saturday at Road America.

After four hours and 107 laps of battling over the four-mile Elkhart Lake, WI circuit, the Muscle Milk Lola/Aston Martin LMP1 of Germans Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr scored the closest overall win in ALMS history, edging the Chris Dyson/ Guy Smith Dyson Racing Lola/Mazda by 0.112 seconds.

Graf took the lead for good on lap38 and was cruising well ahead of Smith until the final 15 minutes when the Brit mounted a scintillating charge that almost cost Graf/Luhr the win.

“Those were the hardest five laps in my career,” noted Graf, who lost the 2010 RA race when he ran out of fuel on the final lap. “They kept telling me to push hard, but save fuel. That’s a tough combination. We worked hard to maintain the gap we had over Guy.”

That gap became harder to defend after the Muscle Milk team chose scrubbed tires while Smith’s crew went for stickers during a yellow flag stop with fifty minutes remaining. And with the event now going later into the twilight than it did in 2010, changing track conditions made the handling tight on rapidly degrading tires.

Watching the action from the pit wall, co-driver Luhr found it difficult to observe. “It’s easier when driving than watching. He (Graf) put in all the tricks to defend the lead.”

“I had to be a lot more aggressive in traffic than I wanted to be. It’s pretty hard to overtake a prototype car when you’re in a prototype car ; it’s pretty hard,” noted Graf. But Smith was nearly up to the challenge as the duo entered their final circuit.

“Our two cars are different; his was 50 kilos lighter and we each have a different engine/tire package. He was better in the twisty parts, but traffic made it actually better for us,” said Graf.

And after weaving through that last-lap traffic, Graf crested the final hill heading for the starter’s bridge with enough of a gap to defend his first-place position. “We showed that ALMS has some of the best sports car drivers in the world. We came so close last year,” noted Graf, “two corners from the end. It was such a great finish today. Lucas and I pair up really well.”

And as the prototype battle was being resolved, the GT competition was also providing drama.

The Ferrari F485 Italia of Risi Competizione overcame early-season problems to score their first GT class win, as Toni Vilander and Jaime Melo cruised to a 9.061 victory over the fading RLL Team BMW of Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner.

Vilander’s red privately-owned Ferrari survived an early race brush with the Corvette of Oliver Gavin as the two were leaving the pits after their first stop. “I had an engineer yelling at me on the radio to shut the door (after a driver change with Melo). I was changing gears and steering and was running out of hands,’ said Vilander. “I knew we were on cold tires and the touch wasn’t that violent, but it was enough to spin both of us.” After regaining control and working his Ferrari forward, the GT chase came down to a pit stop with 45 minutes to go in the race.

The Werner BMW held the lead after a daring two-tire change, but the Houston-based Ferrari , with Melo now at the wheel, edged back into the front spot on lap 87. “I took the lead with about 30 minutes to go in the race. I couldn’t make a mistake because I knew they (Werner’s BMW) still had enough to get around us.”

But the lead built to over nine seconds and the Risi Ferrari held on to score its first ALMS win for the, at times, unreliable Prancing Horse.

“A lot of development was done at LeMans,” noted Vilander. ” We developed the new 485 here and in Europe, but the car is getting so much more consistent and knowing what it will do. Today we’ve shown we’re on a good road.”

Other class winners:
GTC-Black Swan Racing -Tim Pappas, Jerome Bleekemolen
LMP2- Level 5 Motorsports-Christophe Bouchut, Luis Diaz, Scott Tucker
LMPC- PR 1 Mathiasen Motorsports-Rudy Junco,Butch Leitzinger

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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