ALMS race at Lime Rock no walk in park this year

The American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patr¢n returns from its summer vacation at Lime Rock Park with the American Le Mans Northeast Grand Prix. This year’s race marks the ALMS’ eighth consecutive season of racing in New England at one of North America’s most well-known and historic venues.

A field of 32 cars is entered for the race, which would be a record grid for an ALMS event at Lime Rock. The field will use the 1.5-mile, eight-turn layout that features the optional chicane at the Uphill (Turn 5) and the classic West Bend – forgoing a chicane and going straight to the Downhill.

Among the entries is last year’s overall race-winner Muscle Milk Aston Martin Racing. Klaus Graf and Greg Pickett won in 2010 with a Porsche RS Spyder but will bring their Lola-Aston Martin coupe to Lime Rock for the first time. Another contender for overall honors will be Poughkeepsie, NY-based Dyson Racing. Chris Dyson and Guy Smith are slated to share the team’s Mazda-powered Lola coupe.

A staggering field of 16 cars are entered in the GT class including reigning Le Mans GTE Pro class winners Tommy Milner and Olivier Beretta for Corvette Racing. The duo, which won the world’s greatest auto race with Antonio Garcia, hopes to slow down BMW Team RLL and drivers Joey Hand and Dirk Müller. The pairing finished third in class at Le Mans but hold the ALMS GT championship lead with victories in the opening two rounds of the season with their BMW M3 GT.

Also entered in GT at Lime Rock are two Doran-Ford GTs from Robertson Racing, which claimed a hard-fought GTE Am podium at Le Mans for Andrea and David Robertson, and David Murry. The latter will drive with Anthony Lazzaro.

All totaled seven auto manufacturers and four tire marques are in the GT class – BMW, Chevrolet, Ferrari, Ford, Jaguar, Lamborghini and Porsche among the autos; and Dunlop, Falken, Michelin and Yokohama among the tire manufacturers.

Speaking of Le Mans podium finishers, Scott Tucker and Christophe Bouchut will return to the ALMS after finishing third in LMP2 in France. As at Le Mans, they will drive a Lola-Honda coupe at Lime Rock.

The LMP Challenge and GT Challenge classes also will return. CORE autosport, off its first Series victory at Long Beach with drivers Gunnar Jeannette and Ricardo Gonzalez, enters Lime Rock with the lead in the team and driver championships. Black Swan Racing’s Tim Pappas has won the first two races of the season – at Sebring with Damien Faulkner and Sebastiaan Bleekemolen, and at Long Beach with Jeroen Bleekemolen.

At Lime Rock, Pappas will team with Faulkner in the BSR Porsche 911 GT3 Cup entry.

The race is scheduled for 2:05 p.m. ET on Saturday, July 9 with live video coverage available on ESPN3.com in the US, and americanlemans.com for international users and worldwide listeners to American Le Mans Radio. ESPN2 will air the race starting at 10 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 10.