Aston Martin take Laguna Seca ALMS

The factory Aston Martin Lola, pictured here in the famous "corkscrew" took the checkers and the next to last race of the season.

SALINAS, CA — The Aston Martin factory racing team won its first ALMS race, but it was fitting that the Dyson Mazda closed out the ALMS series presented by Patron Tequila at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway with a second place overall finish while its nearest competition Muscle Milk Aston Martin finished virtually out of the money, 45 laps down the leader after dicing with both the winning Aston Martin and the Dyson Mazda throughout the early segments of the race.

Although the Aston Martin factory team with Stefan Mucke, Adrian Fernandez and Harold Primat driving was the winner of the race, it was the Dyson Mazda that took earned its first ALMS title since the 2003.

Both the Dyson Mazda and Oryx Dyson Mazda teams opening the weekend strong, qualifying first and second overall. But after a day of back and forth racing, Mucke passed Dyson’s Jay Cochran with 53 minutes left in the endurance race. With a second place good enough for the series win, Cochran brought the Dyson Lola-Mazda home in second place, bagging the series title for co-drivers Chris Dyson and Guy Smith.

Early in the event there were four Lola chassied cars leading the field with less than a second between the quartet and Chris Dyson leading this freight train. At 2:38 Lucas Luhr in the Muscle Milk Aston Martin traded paint with the Mucke in the eventual winning Aston Martin. Mucke spun but kept going and Luhr was tagged with a one-minute penalty for avoidable contact.

While the Muscle Milk was able to rally and take advantage of a yellow flag after unlapping itself from the field, a cranky oil pump put them behind the wall for more than an hour and sealed their fate in the series championship.

In the GT class things were no less interesting with Jorg Bergmeister passing the Risi Competizione’s Jaime Melo in the 458 Ferrari on the last lap as it sputtered with an empty fuel tank. Bergmeister beat Dirk Mueller’s BMW to the checkers by 3.571 seconds, but the last laugh was Mueller and co-driver Joey Hand who clinched the series championship for themselves and for BMW.

The winning Mazda

The Baltimore ALMS winning Oryx Mazda driven by Steven Kane and Humaid al Masaood.

BALTIMORE, Md. — Racing luck can change in the blink of an eye — and the results from the Baltimore American Le Mans event where Dyson Oryx Racing’s Steven Kane and Humaid al Masaood scored their first career American Le Mans Series victory on the harbor street course there. Series leading Dyson Mazda, the sister team to the winners were second, but had qualified number one for the event and were leading the race until an extra long pit stop in which they had troubles restarting the car allowed the Oryx team to take the lead.

The Dyson Mazda’s cheif competition, the Muscle Milk Aston Martin, winner’s of three of the last four events, were lucky to finish fourth in the class after a wiring harness infarction that apparently happened early in practice kept them from being able to fully compete.

Just when one might have thought that the Muscle Milk Aston Martin might begin to assert itself into the points competition its fourth place finish pushed them four points deeper into the point race with just two races left.

Kane finished the Baltimore event, which was witnessed by an estimated 50,000 race fans, 6.961 seconds ahead of the Dyson Mazda, but was chased to the finish line by his own car gremlins, in which the steering begean giving him trouble.

In the GT class it was the Falken Tire shod Porsche of Wolf Henzler and Bryan Sellers that had the cleanest and in the end the fastest drive for their second victory of the ALMS season.

Henzler pushed his car to the lead thanks in part to the two Corvettes rubbing paint (or plastic as the case may be). The team dropped to third momentarily during the mid-race pit stop but Sellers was more than up for the challenge and took advantage of more on-the-course scuffling, this time between the No. 3 Corvette of Tommy Milner and the No. 56 BMW of Bill Auberlin, which was leading the class at the time.

Milner was flagged with a stop-and-hold penalty and the Beamer went from first to fifth in the GT class and that was all that Sellers needed to roll to a one lap over the second place and points-leading BMW of Dirk Muller and Joey Hand.