Hooniverse Invades American Le Mans At Lime Rock Park
Hooniverse somehow snuck onto the hallowed grounds of Lime Rock Park, for the 2011 American Le Mans series, getting a nice sunburn and raiding the beer tent in the process. Oh, and watching some sort of automobile race.
No $500 beaters or people’s choices here; short of fielding a championship beater and winning a glamorous all-expenses trip to, uh, the real thing, this is as close as I’ve gotten to seeing the prototypes and GT cars in action. The BMW M3 GTR factory team was well-represented here, as well as a pair of Ford GTs. Patron Tequila sponsored the entire shindig—because racing and hard alcohol go hand-in-hand and always lead to the best ideas—with a pair of black and green Ferrari 458 Italians. And the rest of the field was clogged with ass-engined Porsches, to the surprise of no one.
But the real star of the show—even if they didn’t win—were the pair of Corvette C6Rs fielded by the Chevrolet race team, whose exhaust notes shook the ground as they passed: they were a crowd-pleaser and always put on a good show, which included the bang-up halfway through the field that scattered yellow bodywork across West Bend, necessitating a yellow flag and sending safety marshalls scrambling to pick up the pieces. They didn’t win, but that’s still defending the homefield right there.
It’s a shame Aston Martin didn’t show up, otherwise we would have been in for an even cooler show at the uphill and along the back straight, where the chicane was in place. Here are the results from the weekend, and here’s the mega-gallery from Friend Of Hooniverse and fellow boozehound Miata driver Lev Benkin. You can check out his portfolio here, and email him here for wallpaper sizes.
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Wait, no Miatas or E30s?
Oh right, Le Mans.
Also conspicuously absent – British oil spots and paper mache' co-pilots.
plus their penalty box has such lame punishments. "Drive through", "stop and go". These drivers will never learn the ill of their poor driving ways until they have written 100 times "Real racecar drivers don't go four wheels off."
So miata drivers UNITE! only has one tag. So sad.
Everyone knows the S2000 is a superior vehicle.
Depends on how you look at it. I like the S2000 but I prefer the Miata.
No one was surprised when this happened:
†Car 17 penalized 90 seconds for violation of 2011 IMSA Code 5.6 (avoidable contact)