Graf and Luhr sneak into record books with Road America win

Muscle Milk Lola-Aston Martin duo Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr put their names in the ALMS record book by the narrowest of margins in Saturday night’s Road America event, beating the #16 Dyson Lola-Mazda across the line by 0.112s to score the series’ closest ever overall win.

Having controlled the early part of the four hour run the Muscle Milk car came under attack from the Dyson in the latter stages, with Guy Smith setting a blistering pace in the final thirty minutes. The Brit subjected Graf to huge amounts of pressure but the German hung on – just – to record the #6 entry’s third successive ALMS triumph.

Third overall and victory in the LMPC class went to Butch Leitzinger and Rudy Junco (PR1 Mathiasen FLM), who beat the #63 Genoa machine to record their maiden class win. Meanwhile the Tucker-Bouchut-Diaz Level 5 Lola-Honda was the sole representative of the LMP2 class and duly finished the race fifth overall to seal an undisputed win.

The GT class was far heavier on entries and enjoyed its usual close competition. The Risi Ferrari of Toni Vilander and Jaime Melo emerged as victors, their first in the series, ahead of the BMW Team RLL machines of Dirk Werner-Bill Auberlen and Dirk Muller-Joey Hand. GTC honours went to the Pappas/Bleekemolen Black Swan Porsche.

Despite having won four of this season’s six races the Muscle Milk entry still trails the Dyson in the championship, largely due to their failure to register points at the season opener. However the Graff-Luhr machine has now cut the deficit to 18 points with three rounds still to run. The Hand-Muller BMW still leads the GT class, 27 points clear of the #4 Corvette, which could only take fifth in class at Road America. The next event takes place on the streets of Baltimore (September 3).

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James Weeks