PitJournal.com

The winter months are upon us as we wait for the cars of the American Le Mans Series to fire up into action in mid-March. Winter Test Sessions are finally showing us a preview of some of the new equipment from new and old teams. It has been an exciting season with questions that still have not been answered.

At the expense of the P1 class of the series, it has been difficult to find teams and money to compete against the Audi R10 diesel. Everyone has been waiting to see what kind of competition will race against these cars, with Dyson Racing going with the Porsche RS Spyders. Autocon will also be competing with the older Lola AER power plant that Dyson used 2 years ago. Whether or not they will be able to cut a deal with getting the Lola AER V8 cars that they used last year or whether someone else pick up the program? There will not be much of a show in this class unless Zytek, Creation, or someone else decides to compete against Audi.

The real excitement in prototypes will be the P2 class, which has the most potential to maybe snag a couple of overall victories during the season. This did happen last year when the Penske Porsche Spyders clinched a 1-2 victory at the newly repaved Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. There were a couple of tracks that the Porsches became annoying little yellow bee’s to the cutting edge Audi R10 diesels. Penske will be back with their two new Porsche Spyders that are packing over 500 more horsepower than last year’s cars and have fixed the problems with the car overheating. Not only will Penske use these cars, but Dyson Racing will be fielding two of these cars joining Porsche again for the first time since 1991. They have a long history of being a privateer team for Porsche dating back to 1985 and also collecting a dozen victories with the Porsche 962.Acura will be the new challenger to this class with the Highcroft team converting from an older Lola AER to one of the new cars from Honda Racing Development. The other two cars will be new teams to the series which are Andretti Green Racing and Lowe’s Fernandez Racing. These teams bring lots of experience to the table and will not be ones settle for the bottom of any grid.

In the yellow and green battle, we wait to see what Prodrive will continue its competitive run against Corvette Racing. There has been a lot of talk if they will even run the American series since Ford is trying to sell that division. Only time will tell whether we will only see one pair of cars running around in this class.

Just like last year, there will be a tight battle in the GT2 class of who will be on top of the podium from race to race. BMW has left the series and the Team PTG has picked up the Panoz and will compete with a pair of cars with help from Multimatic engineering. New comer Robert Racing LLC will field a Panoz GT-LM also for a partial season and go to a full schedule in 2008.

Porsche has had a resign also with their GT2 cars with a different body style and redesign to the suspension. Competition has become a lot stiffer in this class with the Ferrari F430 and this is Porsche’s response for going for the championship title again. Flying Lizards, Tafel Racing, and Rahal Letterman will all have these new cars for the 2007 season.

Risi Competizione will be back in 2007 to defend its championship with two new Ferrari F430 Berlinettas as the competition keeps pushing on. Risi will not be the only Ferrari’s on track this season with Petersen White Lighting making the jump from Porsche. It will be an exciting year for all of the cars in this class and will be a fan favorite in 2007.

There is excitement in the air for the new season to get started and some questions that still are not answered yet with some teams and manufactures. Next week will begin to answer some of the questions as we arrive at Sebring for Winter Test Sessions. PitJournal.com will be there to keep you up to date with the latest American Le Mans Series news.

Joe Martin

PitJournal.com

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