Flying Lizard Motorsports 5th in Petit Le Mans GT Qualifying

Posted: 01 Oct 2011 05:17 AM PDT

Flying Lizard Motorsports 5th in Petit Le Mans GT Qualifying

The 2011 American Le Mans Series season comes to a close this weekend at the 14th Annual Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The ALMS flagship race gets the green flag on Saturday, October 1 at 11:30 am ET; the race runs a maximum of 1000 miles or 10 hours. In the No. 45 Flying Lizard Porsche Joerg Bergmeister and Patrick Long who will be joined by Patrick Pilet, also a Porsche factory driver. Pilet fills in for scheduled guest driver Marc Lieb, who due to last minute travel issues cannot participate. In the No. 44, Darren Law, Seth Neiman, and Marco Holzer will team up. The trio last raced together at Sebring in March; Law and Holzer have traded off driving duties with Neiman over the season.

Heading into Saturday’s race, Bergmeister and Long are sixth in the ALMS GT driver championship, Neiman is ninth and Holzer is tenth. The team is currently third in the team championship. Both driver and team championships have been decided (won by BMW), but the manufacturers’ championship is still undecided. Porsche is second with 132 points; BMW leads with 154 points. There are 30 points available on Saturday.

Seth Neiman, Darren Law, Marco Holzer

Flying Lizard chief strategist Thomas Blam commented, “We are coming off an exciting win at the Laguna Seca six hours which gives us some welcome momentum heading into Petit. The last three years we’ve had to race very conservatively here because we were trying to clinch the championship. This year it’s unfortunate that we aren’t in the championship hunt, but it puts us in a position where we can race hard from the beginning.”

He continued, “The volume of really good GT cars here is going to make for a very exciting race. There are 19 entrants in GT (Pro) alone — including three additional Ferraris — and 58 cars overall. We are disappointed that Marc Lieb can’t be here, but are pleased to have Patrick Pilet with us. Patrick raced with the team for the 2008 season and I’m confident he’ll acclimate quickly.”

Oneighturbo Beaman ALMS Petit 092811 DSC 9473