American Le Mans Series - Grand Prix of Mosport, August 18, 2002

Tom Kristensen and his teammate Rinaldo Capello scored a decisive victory in a prototype Audi R8 at Mosport. This was their 3rd win in the last 4 races which left the second place Audi R8 of Johnny Herbert and Stefan Johansson trailing a lap behind.

The dominance of the Audis would have been even greater, except for the crash of the polesitter, Emanuele Pirro, in turn 9 while battling Tom Kristensen for the lead. Pirro was unconscious but awoke when transported to the hospital. The crash occured on lap 99 of the 121 lap race with 47 minutes remaining in the race. 3rd place belonged to the Caddillac Northstar LMP-02 driven by Finland’s J.J. Lehto/Max Angelelli of Italy, who were 2 laps behind the leader at the finish. 4th place was taken by Jan Magnussen/David Brabham in the Panoz LMP-01 who were another lap behind the Cadillac. It should be noted that the Panoz LMP has never before lost a race to the Cadillac Prototype, which started the race from the 4th position. Another Cadillac, driven by Bernard/Collard, started in 5th, while the Panoz had the 6th starting position.

The cars in this series run in 4 different classes, the top being the Prototypes called LMP900 and LMP675. These numbers define the weight minimum for the cars in kilograms. The production-based GTS and GT classes have a minimum weight of 1100 kilograms. Other specifications also apply which are available on the ALMS website: www.americanlemans.com

Prototype 900 class has such cars as the Audi R8, the Cadillac LMP-02, the Panoz LMP-01, the Lola B2K/10/Judd, the Riley & Scott MK3C & the Reynard 01Q.

Prototype 675 are lighter and less powerful; Lola and Reynard are common with engines designed by Nissan, Judd and Porche.

GTS class has cars such as the Corvette CR-5, Dodge Viper GTS-R/T, Saleen S7R and Porsche 911 Turbo. GT class. Into this category belong the BMW M3, Callaway C-12R and Porsche GT3-RS.

In the GTS class Canada’s Ron Fellows with co-driver Johnny O’Connell driving a General Motors sponsored Corvette CR-5 (car #3) proved to be the winner to the delight of the spectators. Despite the fact that his archrival Terry Borcheller in a Saleen S7R started in the pole position, Ron was able to overtake him in the first turn and never looked back. This was the first time that Fellows had not been on the pole this season. “I was not letting anyone beat me on my hometrack” said Fellows after the race. His crewchief also contributed to the win by deciding to use the hard compound Goodyears on his car, compared to Borcheller, who used the hard compound ones which started to slide in the turns as the track tmperature climbed to about 41 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the crew did an excellent job during a pit stop which gained Ron an extra 30 seconds. So the final outcome left the Saleen in 3rd place as Fellows’ teammate in the second Corvette managed a second place finish, albeit a lap behind.

The normally much quicker Prototype 675 ( 5 cars in total) were left far behind the Corvettes, 7th and 8th place overall with a multitude of problems. The fastest of those was number 66 in 11th position - a Pilbeam MP84 Nissan.

In a support race the most spectator interest was generated by the World Challenge Touring car race featuring production-based Acura Integras, Honda Civics, Lexus IS300 (2), several BMWs 325/3238s, also Mazda Proteges and a Mercury Cougar.

Looking at the qualifying chart it was apparent that this was a very tight group with similar performance, as the first 12 cars qualified within 1 second of the polesitter’s time (Turner Motorsport #92). As expected, this was an extremely close contest and it was won by a Mazda Protege (#40) after many challenges by th polesitter. The polesitter also lost a sure second place in the final turn, number 10, to the Lexus IS300 who was able to get past by engaging second gear in the middle of the turn. Not the usual procedure, as this turn is normally a third gear corner.

Peter Cunningham, the over-all points leader in this series, driving an Acura Integra type R, was not able to do better than 7th plac while his teammate in a second Acura - Pierre Kleinubing - finished 9th. Cunningham has 176 points while Kleinubing has 161, but the rest of the field is quickly catching up with 3rd place having 159, 4th 158, 5th 153, and the race winner Paul Bonaccorsi with 152.

Finally, for the record: the track record at Mosport was broken several times during qualifying by the Audi R8’s and now stands at 1:07.168 (131.793 mph.) - this by Emanuele Pirro in car number 1. Car number 2 driven by Tom Kristensen also broke the existing record with a time of 1:07.720 (131.721 mph.) Last year’s time was 1:08.222. With times like these, it will be interesting to see what next year will bring.

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