Sports car racing fans should flock to Austin’s Circuit of the Americas this weekend, for a joint weekend of the FIA World Endurance Championship and the American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patron.
The FIA WEC headlines the weekend for its lone North American stop of 2013, with a six-hour race to be held Sunday afternoon. Late Saturday, the ALMS makes its first trip to the circuit for a two-hour, 45-minute race.
Some news and notes for the weekend to follow:
ALMS
The much-hyped DeltaWing Coupe makes its race debut after its first test in Georgia a couple weeks ago. The car is shooting to run at P2 class speeds and serve as a possible option to customers interested in the car for the 2014 Tudor United SportsCar Championship. Katherine Legge and Andy Meyrick will drive, as they have for the team since Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in May.
There are a number of entry list updatessince the last round in Baltimore. Dyson’s P1 car sees Tony Burgess and Chris McMurry back in the No. 16 Lola Mazda. Anthony Lazzaro continues in Extreme Speed’s No. 01 HPD P2 car alongside Scott Sharp for the rest of the year. Several changes occur in PC, with Starworks adding the No. 5 car for Ryan Dalziel and John Pew, David Heinemeier Hansson replacing Alex Popow alongside Bruno Junqueira in RSR’s No. 9, and CORE autosport trading Colin Braun from its PC car to its GT car (No. 05 to No. 06) with Tom Kimber-Smith going the other way. Joey Hand also makes a surprise appearance alongside longtime friend and teammate Bill Auberlen in Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s No. 55 BMW Z4 with Maxime Martin committed to a Blancpain Endurance Series race this weekend.
There’s a handful of car updates as well. CORE’s GT class Porsche is a new tub that has been built up; Team Falken Tire reverts to its 2010 model year Porsche, a backup car that won twice in 2011, and Paul Miller Racing has fixed the damage sustained on its Porsche after all three were involved in a start-line accident in Baltimore.
In the points standings, GT is the closest battle with the Corvette pair of teammates split by two points. Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner right now lead Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia. BMW’s Dirk Mueller, racing with John Edwards, is eight points behind the class leaders.
WEC
This marks the North American debut of the Toyota TS030 Hybrid. Toyota did not have its car ready for the 2012 WEC curtain-raiser at Sebring, run in conjunction with ALMS, and also did not bring one to this year’s Sebring. Audi competed in both events; Audi is also undefeated in four prior WEC races this season.
Porsche’s new-for-2013 991-coded 911 RSR makes its North American race debut, as well. Porsche finished 1-2 at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans in the GTE Pro class with this car.
Chris Dyson will be racing for Greaves Motorsport’s P2 Zytek Nissan in WEC rather than his usual P1 Dyson Lola Mazda in ALMS. Dyson is one of three American drivers in the WEC race, along with Kevin Weeda and Tracy Krohn.
The contingent of ex-Formula One racers includes: Allan McNish (Audi), Stephane Sarrazin, Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson (Toyota), Nick Heidfeld (Rebellion), Vitantonio Liuzzi (Lotus P2), Gianmaria Bruni, Giancarlo Fisichella, Kamui Kobayashi (AF Corse Ferrari), Pedro Lamy and Bruno Senna (Aston Martin).
It was not the first time it has been done, but a rider winning in his Motocross debut is rare as the results show Jett Lawrence swept the motos at Fox Raceway in Pala, California and took the early points lead.Dylan Ferrandis may not be quite 100 percent yet, but he was good enough to finish on the podium at Fox Raceway – Align Media
Lawrence became the 16th rider to win in his Motocross debut and was the 10th rider to do so in the season opener, At 19, he wasn’t the youngest to perform the feat; Rick Johnson was 17 in 1982 when he won the lidlifter at Hangtown, the site of next week’s race, but Lawrence’s inaugural win bodes well. The last time a rider performed this feat, Dylan Ferrandis went on to win the 2021 Motocross championship as a rookie in 2021.
Ferrandis did not sweep the motos that season while Lawrence’s performance on Saturday was perfect. He paced both practice sessions, earned the holeshot in each race and finished first in both motos after leading every lap to score maximum points. Lawrence started the weekend needing 85 points to climb into 20th in the combined SuperMotocross standings for the 450 class. Earning 50 with his perfect Motocross results at Fox Raceway, he is nearly 60 percent of the way to his goal.
Chase Sexton was second across the board. He qualified in the second position and finished 2-2 in his motos. In the first race, he was a relatively distant runner-up behind Lawrence, crossing the finish line a little more than 10 seconds ahead. He got a great start in Moto 2 and pushed Lawrence for the entire race, never getting further back than three seconds. He tried to pressure Lawrence into making a mistake, but both riders hardly put a wheel wrong and they finished within a second of one another.
Returning from a concussion suffered in the Houston Supercross race earlier this season and exacerbated at Daytona, Ferrandis finished third in both motos to take third overall. His most important task at hand this week was to avoid trouble and start the Motocross season healthy at Fox Raceway so he can begin to accumulate strong results and move up in SuperMotocross points.
Ferrandis entered this round 25th in the standings and left Pala in 19th. With that position, he has an automatic invitation to the feature starting grid in the SuperMotocross World Championship as long as he does not fall back.
Aaron Plessinger and Cooper Webb both ended the race with 34 points, but Plessinger had the tiebreaker with a better finish in the second race. Notably, both riders sustained injury sometime during the season, but Plessinger had an advantage by coming back a week sooner in Salt Lak City for the Supercross finale. He finished second in that race.
Webb was cleared late in the week by doctors after being on concussion protocol from a vicious strike to his helmet in a Nashville Supercross heat race late in the season. He made a beeline to the track to run the Motocross opener. After missing last year’s outdoor season, he wanted to make certain that did not happen again. He still has a solid opportunity to catch Sexton for the No. 1 overall seed in the SuperMotocross standings., but he will need to make up 78 points.
For the first time in history, Pro Motocross results from Fox Raceway show brothers as winners on the same day.
Battling a rib injury suffered practicing earlier in the week, Hunter Lawrence got a poor start to Moto 1 and had to overcome his 10th-place standing at the end of Lap 1. He methodically worked his way toward the front but might have settled for a position off the podium if not for heavy traffic in the closing laps. Lawrence was able to get through the field quicker than Justin Cooper and Jo Shimoda to finish third.
Hunter Lawrence overcame sore ribs to score the overall 250 win at Fox Raceway – Align Media
Lawrence’s second moto was much stronger. He earned the holeshot and led all 15 laps of the race to win by a more than eight seconds.
Haiden Deegan didn’t feel any pressure heading into this round. No one expected much in his third Motocross National and he would have been happy with anything in the top five. At least that’s what he said in the post-race news conference. Deegan said similar things after finishing fourth in his first Supercross race this season. In a stacked field of 40 riders at Fox Raceway, “Danger Boy” finished sixth in Moto 1 and second in Moto 2 for the second-place finish overall.
In only his third Pro Motocross National, Haiden Deegan finished second overall. – Align Media
RJ Hampshire had an eventful weekend. He dominated Moto 1 and won by a healthy margin, making a statement about how he will race now that Jett Lawrence is no longer in the field. He was a victim of mayhem in Turn 2 of Moto 2, which forced him to the ground. Another crash on an uphill portion of the track later that same lap put him in 39th. Hampshire salvaged as many points as he could and finished 11th in the second race to stand on the final box of the podium.
Tom Vialle came within a lap of scoring his first career podium. He had the position based on a tiebreaker over Justin Cooper and Maximus Vohland until Hampshire passed two riders on the final lap and earned one point more than that threesome. Instead, Vialle settled for his first podium in an individual moto with a 7-3 in the two races. More accustomed to this style of racing, Vialle will be a factor in the coming rounds.
Cooper finished with a 5-4 in the two motos to sweep the top five and take fourth-place overall. Cooper started five rounds in the 450 class in Supercross this season and none on a 250, so he is starting with zero points in the SuperMotocross seeding, but with runs like this it won’t take long to make up the 89 he needs to climb to 20th.
One of the best performances of the weekend was put in by Vohland. He finished second in Moto 1 and had to withstand pressure from Lawrence in the closing lap. A poor start of 16th in the second race forced him to play catchup and he could only climb to ninth at the checkers.
