Timo Bernhard and Ian James earned American Le Mans Series driving championships on Saturday night, as Johnny Herbert and Pierre Kaffer won the season-ending Audi Sports Car Championships event at Laguna Seca.
The four-hour timed race started at 4pm and finished in both darkness and rain as a shower moved across the raceway in the last 30 minutes of the event. The race marked the first time in the long history of Laguna Seca that a race had run into darkness.
Bernhard secured the GT class driving title as he and co-driver Jorg Bergmeister finished second in class in the Alex Job Racing Porsche, while James secured the LMP2 title as he and James Gue finished third in class in the Miracle Motorsports Courage C65-AER.
Herbert and Kaffer scored the overall race win in the ADT Champion Racing Audi R8, taking the lead in the closing stages of the event from the other Champion entry driven by Marco Werner and JJ Lehto. They won by 56.832 seconds from Lehto and Herbert, already the 2004 ALMS LMP1 champions.
"Winning is a great feeling," Herbert said afterwards. "I remember a couple of years ago here we lost by seconds. I'm glad we got one in a stealthy way. We had a very difficult start. My uniform zipper wouldn't go up on the grid so I had to start the race with it open. Then Chris Dyson got into me and I was in the sand. We had to battle back to the front. I think the tyre compound we chose was the right one."
Teammate Kaffer admitted that the rain had made driving conditions difficult but he was pleased to take the win.
"Things got really, really, tricky when the rain came out," he said. "I have never had to race in these kinds of conditions before. It was very difficult. This is a great feeling winning the first and last race of the season. It is my dream to drive here in America."
Butch Leitzinger and James Weaver finished third in the Dyson Racing Lola B01/60-AER.
Ron Fellows and Johnny O'Connell completed an undefeated season for the factory Corvette team in the GTS class and sent the Chevrolet Corvette C5-R into a happy retirement when they took their fifth GTS win of the season. Corvette won all nine ALMS races this season between its two entries.
