AMERICAN LE MANS ENDURANCE SERIES

SUGDEN MOVES UP TABLE DESPITE TYRE PROBLEMS

The whole principle of the ALMS is embodied in the Petit le Mans race that was held on Saturday the 1st October at the Road Atlanta Circuit in Georgia.   It is a 1000 mile or 10 hour race that requires a high level of reliability and all round performance just like the 24 hours of Le Mans upon which it is modelled.   Tim Sugden driving the J3 Racing Porsche with Justin Jackson and Nic Jonsson finished 6th in GT2 after problems with tyre wear throughout the race.

The normal distance that a Porsche RSR can cover on the regulation fuel tank capacity would be about 50 laps of this 2.54 mile circuit but under the race conditions all 3 drivers in the J3 car found the performance going away after about half that distance.   The wear was so severe that Nic Jonsson, the Swedish driver joining the team for the long distance race had a tyre blow whilst at top speed approaching turn 10.    The resulting spin put the car into the gravel trap and time was lost extracting the car and returning to the pits to repair some damage.   After this blow-out the team found that it could not trust the tyres for a full 50 lap sting and had to make extra stops for safety reasons so that 6th place at the end was a reasonable result.

Tim put up the fastest lap that the car did at 1:23.861, just 6 tenths of a second slower than the fastest GT2 lap, thus demonstrating that they had the pace for a much better result.    Nevertheless 6th place moves Tim up to 4th in the ALMS drivers table and J3 retained 4th place in the Team Table

The Petit Le Mans race is one of the top 4 sports car events in the world and the status is reflected in the fact that most of worlds the top drivers and cars compete.   This is illustrated by the fact that 3 of the GruppeM drivers from the FIA series were driving ALMS Porsches this weekend, Mike Rockenfeller in his regular BAM racing car and Emmanuel Collard, Tim’s partner in th