Round 9 of the 2013 American Le Mans Series season brings Flying Lizard to Virginia International Raceway for the 2-hour, 45-minute Oak Tree Grand Prix. With only Petit Le Mans to follow, the championship hunt takes on an additional urgency as Spencer Pumpelly (USA) and Nelson Canache Jr. (Venezuela) sit in 2nd place, just four points back in the GTC class driver championship. They will again share the Venezuela / eSilicon No 45 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, while Seth Neiman (USA) and Dion von Moltke (South Africa) will pilot the No 44 PR Newswire / eSilicon car. In the team championship, Flying Lizard currently holds a ten point lead, but with a win at VIR worth 20 points and a win at Petit Le Mans worth 26 points both championships are very much up in the air.
Quotes from the team:
Steve Conover, Chief Engineer:
“The racetrack at VIR provides yet another set of complexities that are different from the other courses that we have raced our Cup cars on this year. The setup needs to allow the drivers to jump the curbs in order to set fast lap times. There are some hard braking zones that demand chassis stability and an aggressive brake pad choice. Plus four of the corners are slow enough to cause challenges with corner exit traction also, which adds yet another aspect to optimizing car setup. We will have our work cut out for us but thankfully will have a bit over three hours of track time prior to qualifying to pursue the ideal compromise with the car.”
Dion von Moltke, Driver, No 44:
“VIR is one of the most challenging circuits we will face this year. The track surface is very low grip, which means there is really only one fast line that can be utilized. This also means that traffic will be even more difficult than usual to manage as everyone wants to occupy that single racing line as much as possible. The track also features a wide variety of corner styles and significant elevation changes. The first sector is quite low speed, and you need to have a very positive front end to carry speed in to the apexes. The last two sectors are much different, with very fast corners, including the famous uphill esses. Through the esses getting over the curbs and having a well balanced car allows you to attack the high speed corners. At COTA we also found the tires to be very sensitive to pressure changes and I expect we put big emphasis at tuning tire pressures during our practice sessions at VIR.”
The Oak Tree Grand Prix at Virginia International Raceway gets the green flag at 2:15pm ET on Saturday, October 5th. Qualifying will be broadcast live on ESPN and live online on ALMS.com on Friday, October 4th starting at 3:35pm ET. The race will be broadcast tape delayed in the United States on ESPN2 on Sunday, October 6th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm ET and live online on Saturday, October 5th on ESPN3.com and ALMS.com from 2:00pm to 5:15pm ET. Internationally it will be available live on MotorsTV and live online on ALMS.com as well.