Marco Werner held off a late charge by Butch Leitzinger to score his second consecutive win in the American Le Mans Series with co-driver JJ Lehto in Monday's New England Grand Prix sports car race at Lime Rock Park.
The race was the 50th event in the history of the ALMS, which started in 1999, and was the first-ever ALMS race at historic Lime Rock Park.
Werner, driving the ADT Champion Racing Audi R8, beat Leitzinger's Dyson Racing Lola-MG to the finish line by 1.429 seconds after a late-race caution period set up a five-minute dash to the finish in the two-hour, 45-minute timed event.
Lehto, who drove the first 45 minutes of the race, and Werner led 105 of the race's 165 laps, while Leitzinger and co-driver James Weaver led 59 circuits.
The two cars had a back-and-forth race, with each falling a lap off the lead at separate points during the event. But the key was the next-to-last of five caution periods in the race when Werner was able to make the Audi's final pit stop under yellow shortly after Leitzinger had pitted under green. Leitzinger was able to close into striking distance near the end of the race but Werner prevailed in the final shootout.
"That was a lot of pressure on me," said Werner. "I knew he (Leitzinger) was close for the last restart and he had been running fast. I lost a race to that team last year like that and didn't want it to happen again."
"We got out of sequence which was in our favour for a while, but that last yellow put us a lap down," said Leitzinger. "From then we had to crawl back. We made little dents, but it wasn't quick enough. The #38 (Audi) got caught in horrible traffic and from then I could judge his progress. But with that last yellow lasting a long time, we just didn't have enough time to get it done."
"The race stayed close all the way to the end," said Lehto. "It was up to tactics and it was a good game. It's always nice to win. This was our first time here. It was nice to take it. I was so nervous at the end I didn't know who was going to win."
![A shower of sparks flies from the #38 Champion Audi R8 as Marco Werner drives it on Friday at Mid-Ohio [Pic credit: ALMS/Rick Dole]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/97345.jpg )
