Marino Franchitti rebounded from an accident at St Petersburg to secure a seventh place finish from the third round of the American Le Mans Series at Long Beach.

Alongside team-mate Butch Leitzinger, the #20 Dyson Racing Porsche RS Spyder qualified in ninth overall with Leitzinger at the wheel, with Franchitti then getting behind the wheel for the first stint of the race.

“It's a really difficult start here because there's so little time to get the cars side by side through the tight final turn and it makes it impossible to take advantage of any mistakes ahead of you,” he said. “Being back on the fifth row of the grid I was more concerned in holding my position especially with an LMP1 directly behind me.”

Franchitti held position until the LMP1 of John Field made an optimistic pass, which came to no avail when he ran off course a few laps later.

The Scot then followed the sister car, driven by Chris Dyson, up to the changeover, and a good pit stop by his crew saw Butch Leitzinger leapfrog the sister car in the pits. A solid drive from there saw him bring the car home in seventh place overall, and fifth in LMP2.

“It was good to finish because it's so easy to get caught up in other people's accidents on streets circuits, but it's also frustrating knowing that we could have done so much better,” Franchitti reflected. “We now need to carefully analyse where we went wrong, learn from it, and move on to our next challenge in Salt Lake City in four weeks' time.

“I really can't wait to get back in the car and hopefully we can be back to the competitive form we showed in Sebring and St. Pete.”