By Sam Tickell
It was a year long battle between the Porsches, Acuras and Audis for outright honours
If people thought the 2007 American Le Mans Series was a classic, then the 2008 edition will go down in the record books as one of the best championships ever.
It was arguably the most competitive Championship of any in 2008. ALMS fans were treated to numerous late race passes and outright wins from the Audis, Penske Porsches, Andretti-Green and Highcroft Acuras.
In essence, the ALMS was a two class field – the Prototype Class and the GT Class. Sure the Corvette GT1 cars are far superior to the GT2 cars but that battle made little impact for the fans.
That is not to say the Corvette drivers did not put on a good show for the fans. The intensity of their battling was plain for all to see at the Mid Ohio round where the number 3 car and the 4 car clashed in pit lane, violating many rules and between them, receiving almost eight minutes of penalties.
Their intra-team battle was punctuated at many rounds by the Bell Motorsports Aston Martin.
This car, however was never really on the pace and lacked the vital support from Prodrive that would have given this team at least a change of competing with the Corvette C6.Rs.
But the real GT battles were found in GT2 as, again the Porsche-Ferrari battle raged throughout the season.
The year got off to a difficult start for Risi Competizione who only scored a few points in the first four races with their lead car of Mika Salo and Jamie Melo.
Their year got back on track after a win at Le Mans but they were too far behind to challenge for the ALMS title.
The Ferrari mantle was then taken by Tafel Racing, who had swapped their Porsches for Ferraris for the 2008 season.
Two wins for Tafel before the Le Mans break put them in title contention, their primary opposition being the lead Flying Lizard Porsche.
The Flying Lizard squad was the experienced Jorg Bergmeister and Wolf Henzler. Tafel Racing, however had their own big guns in the form of Dominik Farnbacher and Dirk Muller.
For much of the season, neither team could make a break for the title – until Detroit where Tafel hit problems and Flying Lizard won – giving the important break, late in the season.
The title was decided at Petit Le Mans where the Flying Lizard team beat the Tafel car and put the title beyond doubt.
Tafel and Flying Lizards fought it out in GT2
By Petit Le Mans, Risi had got their year well and truly back on track and took out the class win – thereby winning both Le Mans and Petit Le Mans – a good reward for a difficult season.
The year also had some good performances by the other GT2 teams – notably Farnbacher Loles who won at Road America.
VICI Racing, also running a Porsche was gaining momentum by the season’s end.
Outside the Porsche/Ferrari battle, PTG campaigned the aging Panoz and scored a podium at the final round.
Black Swan and Robertson Racing campaigned for Ford GTs and with development, could become a contender for podium finishes.
The hard luck story for the year was LG Motorsports. Lou Gigliotti created his own version of the Corvette Z06 for GT2 but funds and vital support from GM was not forthcoming and the LG team was only able to do a part season.
It was a shame – the Corvette was certainly a crowd favourite and Gigliotti was passionate and did want to make the project work but, it seems, the people with the money did not share his dream.
But this disappointment was reconciled by a burgeoning Prototype field.
That field expanded out to the largest prototype field in memory at Petit Le Mans as two Creations, the LNT Ginetta Zytek and, excitingly, the Corsa Zytek joined the Audis, Acuras, Porsche, Mazda (Coupe!), Intersport and Autocon entries.
Peugeot made two appearances through the year – again unable to topple the Audi dominance and the Van Der Steur Radical raced once in 2008. Eco Racing also made the grid in their en
The Corsa Zytek entry is exciting as into 2009, Corsa plans to run a hybrid engine – again showing sportscar racing to be at the forefront of new technology in racing.
The end of the year saw some nice surprises, like the appearance of the Mazda Lola Coupe
But that is really a side note to the rest of the prototype racing in 2008.
Time and time again in 2008, the result was decided by just a matter of a couple of seconds.
Over the final three races, the margin of victory was never over five seconds – and the race before – at Mosport – the margin of victory was about 22 seconds – that felt highly irregular at any ALMS race in 2008.
But that was an irregular race in itself – a race where Audi realised the strategy of their P2 rivals, and raced as hard as they could to run them out of fuel. A cruel tactic that took a great result away from the De Ferran Acura.
As in 2007, the outright wins were spread across both P1 and P2, but unlike 2007, Acura was able to take outright victory.
Indeed they almost took out the P2 Championship – both as a manufacturer and as a Team with Highcroft Racing.
Acura and Highcroft fought gallantly as the season came into its second quarter. After a slow start, when compared to Penske, they were able to string together some great results and leave the pressure on Penske.
And the pressure soon told as the Penske team made some unusual errors – including having to come in for two splash-and-dashes at one race, handing valuable points to Highcroft.
But the fairytale was not to be as a crash at Petit Le Mans virtually handed the Title to Penske and Porsche.
Audi on the other hand, were mostly just racing themselves for the P1 title. If the P1 and P2 classes were combined, it would have been much harder for Audi, but in P1, they were dominant.
They faltered at Sebring. They went too hard, too fast in racing Peugeot and like their French rivals, broke the car, allowing Penske to win.
They also had a bizarre race at Detroit where they let Intersport take the win after accidents and penalties took them out of the race.
But they had the P1 championship easily won over Intersport – a result no one ever doubted.
The high point of the classic 10th year of the ALMS was Petit Le Mans. A massive field and great racing.
A stark contrast to Laguna Seca where about 60% of the race was run under yellow.
But overall the 10th anniversary year for the Series was a positive year. A year of impossibly close racing, ever increasing professionalism, increasing investment and growing crowd numbers.
Truly, it was a classic.
Corvette had limited external competition, so the fight between teammates was intense