American Le Mans Series

Yeah, no, they were, you know, 2,600 pounds, 600 horsepower about, and, you know, big buy supply tires, you know, five-speed Hewlin, you know, 100, 125-mile races, great, great fun.

But the era that I was in, that we competed at Le Mans and also the American Le Mans Series, which is now the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, there were less restrictions.

and the the c5 race car was six 620 horsepower about but but it only weighed uh 1100 1100 kilos 2400 pounds and they were you know it was on a radial um more aero and it was uh the sprint races are obviously more more enjoyable uh because you're you know the the The Trans Am series, everything from Player GM to Trans Am to NASCAR, the wheel-to-wheel stuff, bumper-to-bumper stuff was pretty regular.

But the sports car racing was speed, consistency, no mistakes.

Yeah, you, you have made it when you come on YouTube.

Okay, American Le Mans at Mid-Ohio, uh, round six saw all German win with Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner taking the win over their Italian Audi teammates, Dindo Capello and Emanuele Pirro.

Penske Racing Porsche was third with Timo Bernhard of Germany and Romain Dumas of France at the wheel.

Unfortunately, a crew member of Gilles de Ferran's Acura team, Keith Jones, received serious burn injuries during a pit fire, and we wish him safe and speedy recovery.

Uh, Il Leone is back with his Cubs.

Nigel Mansell was at Estoril last week with his sons Greg and Leo, testing a Lola sports car.

The best of Birmingham may race in American Le Mans Series next year.

The kids have not made the impact in single-seaters when compared to the career-long portion show of dear Daddy.

And I was working for a, Tequila Patron.

They had a really great car racing team on a, an American circuit called, uh, American Le Mans.

And there is where I met Sandra Champlain, who maybe some of your viewers have heard of, but she wrote a book called We Don't Die.

I have it right here.

The first edition of Motul Petit Le Mans was held in 1998 initially as part of IMSA.

It would become one of the initial races as part of the American Le Mans Series starting in 1999 and this race from 1998 through until 2013 would be run as a 1000 mile race which was capped at 10 hours.

Since that IMSA merger, though, back in 2014, there's been no distance associated with this race.

It's just been a flat 10-hour endurance race.

The last

time the ACO had a 10-year deal, it was with the late and much-lamented Don Penos for the American Le Mans Series.

And a lot of money changed hands going from where we are now over... to France.

I think that was the last time that we had anything that was as certain, time-wise at least, as what we've got now.

The man behind Muscle Milk.

And at that time, the car was getting older, but it was still an amazing car.

And it was at a time when the American Le Mans series, as was every motorsport series in the world at the time, was really being punished by the global financial crash at the time.

But a few very ambitious privateers came in and took these cars on that were previously factory cars and went and did really, really well with them and won races overall.

Because of that valley.

I remember being here, it was the last weekend ever of the American Le Mans series.

And we were on a direct clash with Petit Le Mans.

I couldn't be at Petit Le Mans.

you I am.

I am.

It was one of only, I think, two American Le Mans Series races that I missed.

No, make that three.

In the LMP1 category, Audi was... dominant for so many years with Tom Christensen as their main driver.

They participated in the American Le Mans Series, ALMS at the time.

They were up against Bentley and some of the other like super iconic and kind of canonical prototype race cars of that era.

So from the early 2000s, we had 2006, I guess, through 2010.