Trois-Rivières, August 3, 2003
Only one week after Infineon Team Joest and Team ADT Champion Racing
were defeated by MG Lola in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) for the
first time, the two Audi customer teams managed to take an impressive
revenge. On the street course at Trois-Rivières (Canada), Frank
Biela/Marco Werner and Johnny Herbert/JJ Lehto provided a superb Audi
1-2 victory repeating last year’s Audi triumph.
Already in qualifying, the two Audi R8 racers set the pace taking the front
row of the grid. Marco Werner’s performance was especially impressive,
driving his first ever qualifying in the ALMS and with the Audi R8. He
qualified on pole position with a margin of more than six tenths of a
second. “That was great and a small reward for the overtime I gave the
mechanics,” said Werner, who had touched a wall on Friday after just ten
minutes of practice. Because of this incident, the Joest Team missed
almost the complete Friday practice session.
Regardless, Frank Biela and Marco Werner were able to work out a perfect
set-up for the difficult street course. During the early stages of the races,
Werner succeeded to pull away constantly from JJ Lehto in Champion’s
Audi R8. The prestigious battle among the two Audi teams was decided at
the start of the second hour of the race when the Joest squad was able to
stay out longer and make the first pit-stop under “yellow”. JJ Lehto came in
six laps earlier under “green”, losing a lap to the Joest Audi. “The stop was
definetely too early,” explained Lehto, who completed almost two hours on
the same set of tyres before climbing out of the cockpit completely
exhausted. “I had almost no feeling in my fingers for the last 20 minutes of
my stint,” the Finn said.
While Frank Biela was defending the margin with which he had taken over
the Joest R8 from Marco Werner apparently easily, Johnny Herbert in the
Champion Audi attempted to make the impossible possible in the final
stages of the race. Nevertheless the Briton succeeded just shortly before
the end of the race to overtake Biela and to unlap himself. “There was
simply too much time to make up,” stated Herbert.
With a margin of almost a minute, Frank Biela crossed the finish line as
race winner although he had to survive two scares: A collision with a
lapped car, slightly damaged the front of his Audi R8, while at the final
pit-stop the starter motor of the R8 did not function immediately. “I am very
happy," said Frank Biela. “That was an important victory for us. It may have
looked simple from outside, but the race was not so easy, although
everything went very well from the very beginning.”
The next race will take place as soon as next Sunday on the street course
in Trois-Rivières (Canada).
Weather: dry, very warm
#38 Lehto passes #1 Biela at the start
Lap 1
#16 Leitzinger leads #20 Wallace, #38 Lehto and #1 Biela
Lap 7
Weather: dry, very warm
Start
#1 Werner leads, #38 Lehto second
Lap 8
#1 Werner leads by 2.7 seconds when the Safety Car comes out
Lap 12 - Restart
Lap 64
#38 Lehto in the pits for refuelling, one lap down
Lap 66 - Safety Car
Lap 70
#1 Werner hands over to Biela, tyre change, refuelling, keeps the lead
Lap 72 -Restart
#1 Biela has a 53-second lead over #38 Lehto
Lap 93
Contact between #1 Biela and #37 Dayton, slight left front damage
Lap 123
#38 Lehto hands over to Herbert, tyres, fuel. Almost two laps behind #1
Biela
Lap 130
#1 Biela refuels, rejoins still in the lead, one lap ahead of #38 Herbert
Lap 164
#38 Herbert passes #1 Biela and unlaps himself
#1 Biela/Werner win 55.503 seconds ahead of #38 Herbert/Lehto
was the third victory for Audi in four ALMS races and the second in a row at
Trois-Rivières
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