ROMAIN DUMAS FINISHES THE SEASON IN STYLE
L a g u n a   S e c a

So the season is wrapped up for Romain Dumas. Having started in Florida, the American Le Mans Series drew to a close in California at the Laguna Seca circuit. Assured of the title at the previous round at the Petit Le Mans event, Romain, originally from Alès, and his co-driver, Timo Bernhard, approached the final round with one objective: to finish in style. So it was mission accomplished for the French-German pairing, Romain himself putting on a great show in the last few metres of the race!

Free practice was marked by many interruptions but at the end of qualifying, the two Penske Porsches monopolised the front row of the grid. “Practice wasn’t easy,” as Romain explained “our usual engineer, Owen Hayes, wasn’t here because of a happy event elsewhere. So we needed a bit of time to adapt. But it was quite difficult because the sessions had to be stopped so often due to cars spinning off all the time”.

Timo started from second place on the grid but was unable to resist the power advantage of the Audi driven by Allan McNish. In third place for a long while, the German driver was however able to take second place from the Penske sister car in the second hour, and took up the helm of the LMP2 class. At the half-way point of the race, Timo was still second overall and first in class when he handed over to Romain. Thanks to great work by the mechanics during the lightning-fast pit stop, Romain rejoined the track without losing a place.

As often this year, the race was punctuated by several neutralisation periods. At the first restart, Romain Dumas resisted brilliantly the better torque of the Audi, but just ten minutes later the Safety Car was again deployed. And this time, on the long main straight which favoured the R10 TDI, the driver from the Gard département of France had no means to fight back. But far from giving up, Romain followed the pace imposed by Dindo Capello. With some cars now on different strategies, Romain had to weave his way through the queue of cars which hadn’t yet refuelled to stay in touch with the leader. He passed his opponents one by one and as the last hour approached, he was still within a second of the leading car. After the last full-course yellow period, he was even in the lead.

History has a habit of repeating itself: with an advantage of more than 200BHP, the Audi again profited from the restart, overtaking the Porsche once more on the main straight. But with the bit between his teeth, the driver of the Spyder RS No 7 refused to give up and kept up the attack. Four times he managed to pass Capello going into the last corner. But four times the Italian used his superior drive to repass. “I knew I had a chance there. So on the last lap, at the last corner, I tried again. We came out of the corner side-by-side but the Audi just managed to outdrag me and get to the  finishing line first.” Second overall by just 4/10ths, Romain was nonetheless on the top stop of the LMP2 podium. “Timo and I wanted to finish with a good result, which we’ve done. This is our eight win in the class, which is a record. And we’ve also had the satisfaction of finishing every race on the podium. Our worst result was a third place. It’s been an exceptional season!”

So with Timo, Romain is LMP2 champion of the American Le Mans Series. A Frenchman has never won this championship. On Sunday evening he received his trophy at the traditional prize-giving ceremony. But there was another award waiting for him: he had been voted as “Motors TV Most Popular Driver” by the ALMS fans. “I’d like to thank Motors TV and all the people who voted for me. It’s really touching. I think we have put on a great show all this year and I think all the drivers and all the fans have really enjoyed the racing. Personally, 2007 has been the best year of my career. I had the best car and I was in  the best team with the best mechanics. So Timo and I, we owed it to ourselves to be the best drivers. If you looked at it just on paper, setting overall pole times and winning overall is impossible, but nonetheless that’s just what we’ve done!”.

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