Follow the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans Live

Two great resources for following the race live:

• Radio Le Mans


• Le Mans Live Tracker

Let's look forward to a great race!

UPDATE: Make sure to check for the latest version of the Live Tracker. Certain features were not working in the initial version.

Video: Huge Crash at Le Mans Qualifying

Hideki Noda's LMP2 Lola-Mazda gets airborne at La Sarthe's Dunlop Curve. What goes up, must come down, and that's where things can get painful. Noda survived the horrific crash and even walked away under his own power. Defiantly, the Kruse Schiller Motorsport team is looking to rebuild and be ready for Saturday's starting grid. That will be impressive should they pull it off.

Le Mans News Round Up

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is almost upon us and the race news is starting to get hot and heavy. Rather than bury you in posts we decided to put the news in one post, all for your convenience. Do we love our readers or what? (For the cynics out there that insist we are actually doing this because we are a bunch of lazy sods, you know what you can do? You can just go to... well, a NASCAR site. How 'bout them apples?)

• Peugeot thoroughly dominates first qualifying session


• Relaxed Rockenfeller eyeing victory


• Corvette target sixth Le Mans win


• Second Epsilon Euskadi to race in LMP1


• Villeneuve: I'm ready to win Le Mans


• Patrón Highcroft's Stefan Johansson joins Le Mans grid


• McNish: We've got a job to finish


• Risi/Krohn Ferrari repaired and ready for Le Mans

Nice Le Mans Preview

Much to my surprise, Ultimatecarpage.com has put together a very nice preview for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It features an extensive image gallery with many beautiful shots of all 55 cars entered. Wait a minute... 55 cars? Now that is an epic starting grid. Damn you ALMS and your piddly little 30 car grids.

Anyway, the best part of the preview is that they have included a picture of each car next to its description. This will definitely come in handy on race day, functioning as a program of sorts. I mean not everyone can instantly tell a Pescarolo Judd from a Lola AER. Sure I can, but some of you may need a bit of help now and then.

Featured Team Of The Month (May)

Void's last post made me realize that we need to keep the coverage on the site well rounded. So, I took it upon myself to start a new feature on SGN, called the Featured Team Of The Month.

So to get started, this month we will be looking at Void's current favorite ALMS team: Intersport Racing.

Intersport Racing is owned and operated by Clint Field. The Ohio based team is one of the founding members of the ALMS series and runs a Lola B06/10-AER in the LMP1 class. The team drivers consist of Clint, Clint's father Jon, and Richard Berry. Both Clint and Jon have won a P2 class championship in the past.

The team is currently running in 2nd place in the P1 class with 33 points. Believe it or not, they are ahead of the 2nd Audi team at the moment. This just goes to show that a team with an owner that also drives can have success in this series. And it shows that Void knows how to pick a team.

First Pics: Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT2

Aston Martin has finally released pictures of its GT2-spec V8 Vantage sports car. The E85 fueled racer will be driven by customer teams in the ALMS, LMS and FIA GT series. It's set to make it's American debut at Long Beach when Drayson-Barwell will finally be able to ditch the GT3-spec DBRS9 they've started the ALMS season with and switch to the new V8 Vantage. Hopefully the increase in performance will allow the team to keep up with the class leading Porsches and Ferraris.

UPDATE: New gallery link!

A Test of Endurance

Okay, so this is at least a day late. Maybe two if you want to get picky. But you have to understand, Sebring takes it out of me.

Sure, we all know what the drivers go through in a race like this. Everyone is aware that this 12 hour race is a mental and physical torture test, run on track so rough it breaks components that easily go 24 hours elsewhere. Everyone knows about the multiple car classes running on the same track, each with its own pace and strategy. Isn’t it common knowledge that drivers in the slower classes must be constantly on the look out for faster cars overtaking them while, at the same time, try to keep their peers from getting any advantage? Similarly, who doesn’t know that drivers in faster classes must weave their way through traffic, gambling on the best place to pass larger cars that, most likely, can’t see what's right next to them? Sebring is hot, it’s grueling; it’s the kind of event that defines international sports car racing.

Yeah, yeah we know all that. But has anyone taken the time to think about what it takes to watch the damn thing?

No doubt, Sebring is a great way to start the ALMS season. After the long winter break, it serves as a kind of bacchanalia for sports car racing fans. We gorge ourselves on the sights and sounds of the historic 12 hour race: the fans filling the starting grid before the race, the classic beauty of an Aston Martin in British Racing Green and the sinister shape of the Peugeot LMP1 are mixed with the hum of turbo-diesels, the roar of naturally aspirated V8 engines and the sweet terror that blasts forth from the pointy end of a Panoz Esperante. It’s the kind of celebration that we desperately need in the wake of the dull off season.

But all of this bounty has its drawbacks. Like the feeling that sets in after a huge Thanksgiving meal, race fans who watch the entire 12 Hours of Sebring are left overstuffed and sleepy. Not that we would go back and leave anything on our plate but we still realize we may have overdone it. And so I come to the reason why I waited this long to post about the great American endurance race: Sebring leaves me knackered. But I have recovered and now have the energy to tell you about the actual race.

Of course, if you got this far in my rambling post, you probably watched the race yourself. You undoubtedly saw Peugeot take off like a rocket only to surrender like the Frenchmen they are a little while later. You witnessed Audi run into more problems in one Sebring than they have experienced in the previous eight - races they so easily dominated. It’s impossible that you missed that huge Zytek crash or last year’s GT2 winner, Jaime Melo, spearing a Farnbacher Loles Porsche for some unknown reason (did he think it was a Flying Lizard?). And I’m sure you caught the end of the race. With a record four cars on the lead lap, an LMP2 Porsche crossed the line first making Roger Penske the only team owner to win the Daytona 500, the Indianapolis 500 and the Sebring 12 Hours. The way things are going, this Memorial Day, he may able to say he did it all in the same year. Talk about achievements.

Overall, I really enjoyed the race. Sure, the audio/video glitches in the first two hours of SPEED's coverage nearly drove me insane. And we didn’t get an amazing finish line dash like we had last year. But how often does something like that happen in a 12 hour race? What we did get was another dose of that old Sebring magic. And it has left me very excited for the remainder of the sports car racing season. However, I'll say this, I am definitely taking a nap at some point during the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

ALMS News Round Up

There's been a staggering amount of news coming out of the American Le Mans Series in the past 48 hours. Rather than bombard you with posts we have decided to roll it all into one big, fat mega-post:

• The 12 Hours of Sebring Starting Grid


• Peugeot Fastest, But Audi Takes The Pole?


• Pictures of Crashed Mazda Prototype


• Eco Racing Withdraws From Sebring


• Audi Commits to Full Season With Two Cars


• Risi Competizione Announces More Drivers


• ALMS Takes Center Stage at Energy Conference

Road America Announces Replacement For ChampCar

On Monday, officials at Road America announced that the SCCA SPEED World Challenge has signed on to replace the canceled August 10th ChampCar event. In addition, they have confirmed that the American Lemans Series 4-hour endurance race will be held as scheduled on Saturday, August 9th. Further bolstering the weekend action, a second Atlantic Championship race has been added. With Star Mazda, Formula BMW and Skip Barber National Series also on the program, Midwest race fans are in for quite a treat later this summer. We hope to see you there!

Grand Prix of Houston Canceled

In the wake of the American Open Wheel Racing "merger", officials in charge of the 2008 Grand Prix of Houston have decided to cancel this year’s combined ALMS/CCWS event. While thought was given to running the race with ALMS as the main attraction, the costs involved could not be justified.

It seems the consolidation of AOWR has claimed its first non-OW victim. This action reduces the number of races on the ALMS schedule to 11 unless another race can be picked up later in the season. However, the likelihood of that happening is very remote.

One has to wonder if another ALMS/CCWS event might also be on the chopping block. The Long Beach Grand Prix is confirmed to take place this year by IRL officials but what about Road America? Could the same fate of Houston befall this year’s event at the historic road course in Elkhart Lake, WI? As always, we'll keep you updated.

ALMS Car Count on the Rise

Recent announcements from VICI Racing and ECO Racing have pushed the full season ALMS car count to more than 30, with at least 35 cars competing at the season opener, the 12 Hours of Sebring. VICI Racing will be running a 2 car campaign in the GT2 class with the venerable Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. ECO Racing will be taking a much more "radical" approach. Their 2 car team will consist of Radical SR10 Biodiesel-powered LMP1 prototypes. They will be only the second team (after Audi) to run a full season in the ALMS with a diesel engine. And, yes, that pun was really lame... I will now go and eat some razorblades as punishment.