The pit-stop though proved crucial and when one of the mechanics removed his goggles, the #2 car was hit with a 25-second penalty. That cost Luhr and Werner a lap and dropped them to eighth. The duo eventually had to settle for fourth overall and the LMP1 win.
"This race belonged to Audi," said Werner. "We really had a good chance to win this race. Now it's a class victory and we have to be content with this. Virtually we came back from nowhere. But it's clear we had more in our hands."
Luhr echoed those thoughts: "We had the speed to achieve much more today because we had the fastest car in the field. But if you don't have the necessary luck than you cannot win. This happened to us today.
"We lost a lap due to the penalty in the pits. The team did a great job afterwards and Marco was really flying so we were able to get the lap back. Unfortunately there was no caution period at the right time. At least we've scored another class victory though and we were stronger than expected on this track."
Head of Audi Motorsport Dr Wolfgang Ullrich was not amused and will want to see a better showing next week at Mid-Ohio.
"The performance of the Audi R10 TDI was great, but unfortunately both the team and the drivers made mistakes that prevented us from scoring an adequately good result. Such errors simply may not happen because the competition in the American Le Mans Series is so strong," he summed-up. "I hope that next week at Mid-Ohio everybody will concentrate on making an absolutely flawless job. Only then we can win."
