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Graf, Luhr win again; Corvette takes landmark GT victory

Fuel strategy won out at Long Beach on Saturday with Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr winning the Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach for the second straight season. The Muscle Milk Honda Performance Development ARX-03a stopped twice during the race's sole caution period and ran the final 56 minutes without another stop to win over Dyson Racing.

The Graf-Luhr pairing became the first to repeat at Long Beach in the ALMS' six visits. Graf and Luhr now share the P1 championship lead with Chris Dyson and Guy Smith. The race marked the end of a hectic weekend in which Friday's qualifying was washed out, and the first time the field saw a dry track came in the race.

"It was a really difficult week. We didn't have any dry times," said Luhr, now a three-time winner at Long Beach. "We are driving a new car so we had no data to use from previous races. We took our best guess, and the engineers and the guys from Michelin did a perfect job. The tire choice was excellent for here. It all worked out well.

The Muscle Milk car lost the lead on its first pit stop when the team suspected the car didn't get a full fill of E10 - an issue that harkened back to the team's disastrous closing moments at Sebring when it lost the race due to fueling rig problems.

Saturday's curse turned out to be a blessing as the quick splash just before the restart ensured the car could get to the end without fueling again.

"It was not the plan for the extra fuel," Graf said. "We did a good driver change and usually by that time we are ready to go, but I'm not sure why it took so long. We weren't sure if we got a full fill, and with one yellow we knew it would be very tight. We just had to be sure we were safe on fuel until the end. I did a number of qualifying laps just to catch up to Chris. Once I was close to him we were side by side going down the front straightaway. I got just ahead of him, kept ahead, and maintained the lead."