1998 Petit Le Mans

The 1998 Petit Le Mans was the seventh race for the 1998 IMSA season, then known as the Professional SportsCar Racing series. It was also the first race of Don Panoz's American Le Mans Series developed with the backing of the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), the ruling body of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It took place on October 11, 1998.

Development

Following the demise of the World Sportscar Championship in 1992, sportscar racing was left without a major worldwide series in which to compete. The 24 Hours of Le Mans remained a remanent, still competed by a large number of sportscars, but mostly on a single race basis. Various sportscar leagues had sprung up since the WSC's demise, including the International Motor Sports Association's replacement for their Camel GTP series, the Prototype SportsCar Racing series. In Europe, two series were also developed, the FIA Sportscar Championship and the FIA GT Championship, although they were not combined like IMSA's series.

The Automobile Club de l'Ouest, wanting to create a new worldwide series, made an agreement with Don Panoz, owner of the Road Atlanta racing course. The ACO would agree to lend the Le Mans name out to Panoz for the creation of an event called the Petit Le Mans (French for "little Le Mans"). The race would be similar to the 12 Hours of Sebring, in that it did not run a full 24 hours like Le Mans. Instead, the race would be 10 hours or 1000 miles, whichever came first. The series would become an experiment for the ACO, in which if enough teams showed interest in Petit Le Mans, the ACO would look into developing a series around the same formula. In order to help drive interest, the ACO promised that the winners of Petit Le Mans would earn automatic invitations to the 24 Hours of Le Mans without having to apply or earn favor with the ACO.

IMSA, which normally ran at Road Atlanta during their seasons, agreed to allow a joint race for their series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans competitors. However, each series ran slightly different formulas for their competitors, thus forcing the organizers to create seven different classes. LMP1, LMGT1, and LMGT2 for the ACO compliant cars, and WSC, GT1, GT2, and GT3 for IMSA's competitors. Even though both organizers used the GT1 and GT2 names the classes were not actually the same, which is why the ACO classes are preceded by LM.

Official Results

Class winners in bold.

tatistics

* Pole Position - #26 Porsche AG - 1:13.754
* Average Speed - 164.62km/h

Post-Race

With a total of 31 entrants, including a large number of European teams, the ACO considered the race a success. The only downside was that BMW, who had initially entered their BMW V12 LMs, did not show up for the race. However, the ACO and Don Panoz pushed ahead with their plans and announced the American Le Mans Series for 1999. IMSA, whose own racing series was faultering, decided to take instead take over as sanctioning body for the new American Le Mans Series.

The ACO would repeat this kind of one-off experimental race in preparation for a series in the future, with the 1999 Le Mans Fuji 1000km and 2003 1000km of Le Mans.

External links

* [http://wsrp.ic.cz/imsa1998.html#7 1998 Petit Le Mans results (WSRP)]
* [http://wspr-racing.com/wspr/results/imsa/imsa1998.html#7 1998 Petit Le Mans results (WSPR-Racing)]
* [http://www.lasersol.com/CyberMotor/plm_1998/ 1998 Petit Le Mans Photos and News]