ALMS 2012: Long Beach Preview

Klaus Graf leads Dyson's Lola B12/60 at Sebring (Photo: John Dagys)

After an exciting opening round at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the American Le Mans Series heads west this weekend, for round two of the championship at the famed Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Known for its unique atmosphere and cramped racing, it is definitely a unique stop on the series calendar.



Like last season, P1 again sees Muscle Milk Racing vs Dyson Racing, although with some changes. Both teams debuted new cars at Sebring with Muscle Milk's HPD ARX 03a nearly securing an overall podium behind two of the factory Audi R18 TDI's until a fueling issue on the team's final stop forced the team to retire. Dyson's new Lola B12/60 enjoyed a less spectacular debut , but managed to outscore Muscle Milk due to their reliability issues, proving the old adage that the fastest car does not always win.

Joining the two main contenders is a second Dyson entry to be piloted by 2011 PC Champion, Eric Lux and sports car veteran Michael Marsal. However, with the pace shown by Muscle Milk's new HPD both Dyson entries could struggle to keep up.

2012 sees a rebirth of sorts for P2 in the ALMS, with a solid four car entry for Long Beach that is rumored to grow larger as the season progresses. Leading the charge are the two HPD ARX 03b's of Level 5 Motorsports. Conquest Racing and former GTC Champions, Black Swan Racing round out the class. Black Swan sees the return of the ace, Jeroen Bleekemolen to their lineup so look for pace out of the #54 than they displayed at Sebring.

GT action (Photo: John Dagys)

GT yet again provides the class with the most excitement and depth in the ALMS. At Sebring, BMW picked up where they left off in 2011 by scoring a dramatic victory. Although BMW came out victorious at the 12 Hour, it would appear that reeling off the victorious in dominating fashion like they did last year is a thing of the past due to improvements by the other teams. Corvette went blow for blow with BMW at Sebring and appear to have made great strides over the winter. Its been well documented that the Corvette boys have not enjoyed nearly the level of success that was anticipated when they joined GT in 2009, so you have to figure their mindset is "championship or bust" this year. Whether that goal comes true or not is largely down to how they match up with BMW, but Porsche can't be counted out this year, especially after the announcement of a 20kg weight reduction in the new 911 GT3 RSR.

Two more GT entries to keep an eye out for are the factory Aston Martin Vantage V8 and Alex Job Racing's new Lotus Evora. The Vantage showed surprising speed on debut at Sebring and could be a dark horse for a podium finish at Long Beach.

Aston Martin's new GT contender (Photo: John Dagys)

Be sure to catch the action live at 7:15 EST this Saturday on ESPN2 and ESPN3.com for live streaming.