Porsche take 1-2 win at Mid Ohio

Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard captured their first overall victory in their RS Spyder, having fought back from starting 22nd and last because the car was found to be underweight in post-qualifying inspection.

The German pairing of Sascha Maassen and Lucas Luhr, who had stared on pole, finished second.

Porsche's victory was a dominant one, with both cars consistently lapping quicker than the rest of the field. Dumas eventually beat Luhr in the sister cay by less than half a second at the flag, having got ahead when he chose to save time on his final pitstop and not change tyres, unlike the sister car of Luhr.

The Penske-Racing-ran team beat the Audi R8 of Allan McNish and Dindo Capello. It is only the second time an LMP2 car has won an overall race in the series.

"As we came in to this weekend, we were most concerned about reliability from the last two weekends," team owner Roger Penske said. "I think this broke the ice, running against the Audis and the Dysons. You'll notice we've been real lucky with the four drivers we have; not one of them have made a mistake."

Capello and McNish were third in the heavily ballasted R8, but it was good enough for their third straight LMP1 victory of the season.  The pair just have one more race with the older R8 before switching to the new diesel-powered R10.

"It is a great result for us - another maximum points score to extend our championship lead," Capello said. "It was a struggle to get temperature into the tires; once we had some heat it was OK. But after each full-course yellow safety car period it took about five laps to get good grip."

Dyson's Racing's Lola was in contention for victory, however an off-track excursion at two thirds distance put paid to any chance of a podium finish.

Intersport Racing's Lola finished third in class and fourth overall to help Clint Field and Liz Halliday maintain their LMP2 title lead over Maassen and Luhr.

Olivier Beretta and Oliver Gavin also made history in the GT1 class. Their victory broke Karl Wendlinger's 1999-2000 run of seven successive class victories. Beretta and Gavin have now taken eight wins on the trot dating back to Portland last year.

"It's luck, and we've had that for sure," Gavin said. "But it's also that the team has done a fantastic job. We just seem to be getting it right. I look back when we first started driving together, we did make some mistakes and things weren't working so well. We knew that if we put everything together we'd get it right."

In GT2, Flying Lizard Motorsports' Porsche 911 GT3 RSR was victorious, with Johannes van Overbeek and Wolf Henzler at the wheel.

Pos  Drivers               Car                          Laps
 1.  Bernhard/Dumas        Porsche RS Spyder             119
 2.  Maassen/Luhr          Porsche RS Spyder             119
 3.  McNish/Capello        Audi R8                       119
 4.  Leitzinger/Weaver     Lola B06/10 AER               116
 5.  Gavin/Beretta         Corvette C6-R                 116
 6.  O'Connell/Fellows     Corvette C6-R                 116
 7.  Turner/Enge           Aston Martin DB9              115
 8.  Halliday/Field        Lola B05/40 AER               115
 9.  Sarrazin/Lamy         Aston Martin DB9              114
10.  Cosmo/Bach            Courage C65 Mazda             112
11.  McMurry/Lewis         Lola EX257 AER                111
12.  Henzler/van Overbeek  Porsche 911 GT3 RSR           110
13.  Brabham/Maxwell       Panoz Esperante GTLM          110
14.  Neiman/Law            Porsche 911 GT3 RSR           109
15.  Auberlen/Hand         BMW E46 M3                    109
16.  Marks/Sellers         BMW E46 M3                    107
17.  Salom/Melo            Ferrari 430 GT Berlinetta     105
18.  Devlin/Van der Steur  Lola B2K/40 AER               104
19.  Long/Bergmeister      Porsche 911 GT3 RSR            93
20.  Jeannette/Milner      Panoz Esperante GTLM           57
21.  Dyson/Smith           Lola B06/10 AER                 3
22.  Rockenfeller/Graf     Porsche 911 GT3 RSR             0