Arriving
for the new Long Beach round, Romain Dumas realised that the street circuit
would suit his Porsche RS Spyder very well. Agile in acceleration and through
the many low speed corners of the Californian seaside resort, used for many
years by the Champ Car series, the LMP2 prototype built by Porsche would be
very competitive here, to the extent that the team could hope for an overall
win. This prospect was made even more real during free practice, when the two
Team Penske cars were a match for their rivals, the first seven runners at the
top of the time sheets separated by only 4/10ths”. This weekend it was Timo Bernhard’s turn to qualify the No 7 car, Romain having accomplished this task so brilliantly in St Petersburg. Romain’s co-driver set third fastest time behind the Acura of Dario Franchitti and Ryan Briscoe’s Spyder. He was also ahead of the Audi R10’s and the two other Acuras. Surrounded by as many other customer cars, Timo would have to be extraordinarily careful at the start, more so than Romain at St Petersburg, where the Frenchman was in pole position. The start was even more crucial on this occasion as, exceptionally, the race distance had been shortened to just 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Very
aware of the importance of the first few laps, Bernhard positioned himself in
the slipstream of Franchitti’s Acura and stayed glued to his exhaust pipes.
Then lady luck played them a winning hand and the perfect scenario presented
itself: twenty-two minutes into the race, the Safety Car was deployed. Timo
and the team decided while the race was still running under full-course yellows,
to make their fuel stop as soon as the minimum driving period of 30 minutes
was completed. “When I saw Timo
coming in for his stop, I knew that the driver change would be crucial as we
were only going to add fuel to get us to the end of the race. We’ve done a lot
of practicing of driver changes and everything went totally according to plan.
We were able to stay on the same lap as the leader and then I knew I had to
attack the traffic in the next 20 laps to get back in touch with the leaders”.
This is effectively what Romain did and eventually he found himself back in
second place, when the Acura stopped to refuel and to change tyres, whereas
the No 7 Spyder was taking the risk of completing the whole race on only one
set of tyres, just as they had done at Mid-Ohio last year.Ten minutes from the end, Romain Dumas had a ten second lead over the team’s second car and kept that lead until he crossed the finish line in first place overall. Romain and Timo thus became the first drivers to interrupt the run of victories by the Audi R10 in the ALMS.
This
win, topped off by the second place for Maassen and Briscoe, gave the Penske
team a resounding double and fantastically, Porsche its first ever 1-2-3 in
the ALMS, as the Dyson Spyder RS, driven by Wallace and Leitzinger, also finished
in a podium position. This victory, most certainly one of the best of
Romain’s career, was unquestionably just reward for a perfectly planned and
executed drive. “I think it’s
possible to talk about a perfect race, when you analyse it in detail. We had
a great start, Timo drove a faultless stint. The team asked him to come in at
exactly the right time, at almost precisely the right second, because a driver
cannot drive for less than 30 minutes and he stopped after 30’10”! And we decided
not to change tyres. It was the right strategy even if it was slightly risky.
On top of all that, the car was perfect and the tyres too. Apart from 25 seconds,
I was at the wheel of the car for almost the maximum period allowed. Everything
went exactly to plan for this race, it’s truly fantastic. To help win this 1-2-3
for Porsche, in this way, I couldn’t hope for better”
said Romain, who was clearly delighted with the result and looking forward to
the next round at Houston, where he believed the car would be equally competitive.romaindumas.com