half-distance race
Petit Le Mans race officials declared the race finished about 8 p.m., after hours of suspension. Only 467 of the scheduled 1,000 miles of the Petit Le Mans sports car race had been run before heavy rain caused the American Le Mans Series to stop the race due to flooding on track.
Drivers, team members and spectators waited three hours in a driving rain before calling it quits.
The highly-anticipated competition between Peugeot, Audi and Acura teams in the Le Mans Prototype 1 class didn’t go far in less than five hours of racing.
The Petit Le Mans is ordinarily 10 hours or 1,000 miles — whichever comes first. This is the first time it has been artificially shortened since its inception.
Scotsman Allan McNish had passed the Peugeot 908s at the start and led the field until heavy rainbegan to fall on Road Atlanta. When he spun behind the pace car, the race lead fell to Franck Montagny in one of the 908s. He cruised in the lead until the race was red-flagged ( stopped). Montagny and co-driver Stephane Sarrazin thus ‘won’ the twelfth Petit Le Mans.
It was Audi’s first loss at the Petit Le Mans, and McNish said that he had wanted the race to be stopped several laps before it was red-flagged. “The car was floating more that actual driving. It was a late decision.”
Acura pilot Dario Franchitti agreed “The conditions out there were just terrible – probably as bad as I have ever seen. I nearly crashed while following the safety car. You get these rivers running across the track.”