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Mosport: Joest takes victory

The Joest Racing duo of Frank Biela and Marco Werner drove their Audi R8 to victory in the American Le Mans Series race at Mosport Park to further increase their championship advantage over Champion Racing's JJ Lehto

It marked a remarkable fourth consecutive ALMS victory at the Canadian track for the Joest team, and came after a tight battle between the two customer Audis and Dyson Racing's lead LMP675 class Lola.

Pole-sitter James Weaver led the early laps in his Lola, despite contact with Lehto in the first corner. However, the Briton and team-mate Butch Leitzinger dropped out of contention shortly after the first hour of the race, when a battery failure required a lengthy pit-stop, putting them six laps down.

The two Audis then swapped the lead several times, but after the final pit-stops Werner emerged in front, chased hard by Johnny Herbert in the Champion machine. The Briton tried to pass several times but eventually came unstuck when he tried to dive down the inside, only to make contact with a GT-class Porsche, which sent him bouncing over the kerbs. This caused significant damage to the car's bodywork, dropping him down to 20th.

"I'm very, very disappointed," said Herbert. "I'm extremely annoyed with the driving standards of some of these drivers. I was forced on to the curb and that was that. Finished! I'm choked."

Andy Wallace and Chris Dyson came home second overall and first in the LMP675 class, after pacing themselves at the start to check on the effects of a heavy crash in the morning warm-up. The JML Panoz of Toronto driver Scott Maxwell and Gunnar Jeannette finished third overall.

The GTS class once again featured an intense battle between the Chevrolet Corvettes and the Veloqx Prodrive Ferrari 550s. Early class leader Oliver Gavin crashed out of the race heavily just before half distance, promoting the two Ferraris to first and second in class. But Johnny O'Connell and local favourite Ron Fellows pushed hard in the second Corvette, and were able to leapfrog their rivals for the win by the end despite their tyres wearing out, coming home just 0.835s ahead of the Ferrari of Peter Kox and Tomas Enge.

"We ran out of tyres for about eight laps from the end," O'Connell explained, "but this Corvette can get pretty wide when it has to. This is Ron Fellows territory, so we had to get the win, and the guys won us this race in the pits."

Timo Bernhard and Jorg Bergmeister took victory for the Alex Job Racing Porsche team ahead of the Risi Competizione Ferrari.

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