The two Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3 RSRs will begin this weekend's title-deciding American Le Mans Series finale at Laguna Seca from third and fifth on the class grid, and have vowed to take the tussle for honours right down to the last lap.
After overcoming an early technical issue on the #45 machine, Jörg Bergmeister produced a strong lap to place the car he shares with Johannes van Overbeek third on the GT2 grid. The German duo are up against Risi's Mika Salo and Jaime Melo for the end-of-season laurels, and though the Finnish-Brazilian pairing seized the class pole, Bergmeister and van Overbeek's Petit Le Mans success two weeks ago sees them enter the race as very much the équipe on form.
“Both Lizard Porsches were fast in qualifying,” asserted race engineer Stefan Pfeiffer. “On the #45, we had some technical issues in the morning which kept us from running. That meant we only had the afternoon session to complete our set-up, and multiple red flags didn't give us much time to work with. The team did an outstanding job in getting the #45 on track in the afternoon, though, and getting to a solid race set-up for tomorrow.”
Seth Neiman, Darren Law and Lonnie Pechnik will share driving duties in the sister #44 machine, and from fifth on the GT2 grid the trio will do all they can to help their team-mates clinch the crown. Following a string of bad luck, van Overbeek and Bergmeister currently sit 22 points behind Salo and Melo in the drivers' standings, and in order to triumph will need to win the race and see their rivals fail to score.
In the teams' championship, Flying Lizard is 13 points adrift of Risi, meaning to lift the laurels the former must win the four-hour race and have the latter finish no higher than sixth.
