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| Road America Race Notes: Corvette |
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O'Connell and Magnussen on a Roll with Road America GT1 Win
No. 3 Corvette C6.R Scores Sixth Victory of the Season as Gavin Walks Away from High-Speed Accident
ELKHART LAKE, Wis., Aug. 9, 2008 - Johnny O'Connell and Jan Magnussen are on a roll in the GT1 class of the American Le Mans Series. The pair scored their fifth win in a row and their sixth victory of the season today in the Generac 500 at Road America in the No. 3 Compuware Corvette C6.R. The No. 4 Compuware Corvette C6.R of Olivier Beretta and Oliver Gavin finished third, retiring after an accident in the high-speed Kink. Gavin was uninjured in the incident.
"Over the past three years I thought I must have been an adopted Irishman, but our luck has definitely come back," declared O'Connell after tallying his 34th career ALMS victory. "The important thing is that Oliver is okay. Anytime you go off at the Kink it's a big deal, so we're grateful that he is all right. In fact, I welcomed him to the 'I Wrecked at the Kink Club.'"
Prospects looked bleak for the No. 3 Corvette when Magnussen made an unscheduled green-flag pit stop at the 2:32 mark in the four-hour race, and then pitted again 12 minutes later under caution. But fortune smiled when the No. 3 Corvette avoided losing a lap when the safety car came out, and the additional pit stops ensured that it could run to the finish with only a splash of ethanol. The No. 4 Corvette, in contrast, still had to stop for a full tank of E85R ethanol, and would likely have surrendered the lead to its sister car as a result.
"I had a small problem and had to make a stop to have the crew check out the car," Magnussen explained. "We came in, made some changes, and the car was absolutely great when we went back out. Having done that, our strategy was that we basically had to run behind the No. 4 Corvette and then we could win with a short splash of ethanol at the end.
"The car wasn't great at the beginning of the race, but everything came to us," the Dane noted. "We made adjustments that gave us a good car at the end. Then unfortunately the No. 4 car had a bigger problem than we did."
Gavin was leading the GT1 class when he went off course in the high-speed Kink, bringing out the fifth of seven full-course caution periods.
"Jan was behind me, I was pushing hard, and I was trying to make up some time," Gavin reported. "I just turned the car in too quickly and got on the inside curb; the car shot across to the exit curb, and then onto the grass. By the time I was on the grass, there was no way I could hold it.
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