Fantastic Fourth-place finish at Petit Le Mans for Team TransSport.
October 6th, 2007 Braselton, GA - Team TransSport delivered an exciting fourth-place finish at the 10th anniversary of the Petit Le Mans, North America’s only qualifying race for Le Mans and the longest endurance test behind Sebring.
Road Atlanta saw its own attendance record smashed as it sold over 105,100 tickets to the marquee event.
Most teams were at the track for two weeks as there was a three-day test period prior to race weekend. Thursday and Friday saw extensive morning, day and night-driving testing before the Saturday event as well.
Marc Basseng (DE) joined the team, as he did at Sebring, as their third driver complimenting past series champion, Terry Borcheller (US) and team co-owner, Tim Pappas (US).
The record crowd saw a race in which both the over-all winner and GT2 top-3 were decided in the final five minutes of the 1000 mile race.
Team TransSport managed to steer clear of most of the carnage that accumulated during the race. The 54 car did receive a stop and go penalty for contact with the Krohn Racing Ferrari which sent the 430GT into a spin. Marc Basseng followed the slower Ferrari for some time but the lime green Krohn car would not let him by to compete with the race leaders. Mark made a strong pass during which the Krohn car drifted into him sending the Ferrari spinning – one of many off-track excursions for the 430GT at Petit.
The only other unscheduled stop of the 10 made was to replace a de-lamination of the left-rear that occurred during Pappas’s first stint.
Jon Lieberman, team co-owner had this to say after the race, “We’re all very excited with this result. We’ve been close to, and knocked off the podium by contact more than once this year. A fourth in this event is fantastic. It was great to see all the guys running to the wall after a long 12+ hours of preparation and racing, not to mention the two weeks most of them have been here testing.
The Yokohama was closer to the Michelin than we expected and they gave us good support to make a run for it. My hat goes off to Tim (Pappas) who had the left-rear delaminate – man, he held it together and brought the car in without any damage. That could have been a mess for us. Terry (Borcheller) drove a great start and double stinted at the end when I know he was tired – but with a chance for podium we had to make that call and not risk loosing time on the driver change. Mark (Basseng) drove strong stints as well, very consistent and fast, it was great to have him back.
You really have to tip your hat to Jim Bell after this event – after all of this racing the only thing that failed on our car was a light bulb. Amazing. The track characteristics changed quite a bit during the race with the change from low to high and then back to low temperatures, and with the addition of all the rubber. Jim made some snap changes to the set up actually during the race to help during those transitions. I wish I could name everyone here – all the guys did a fantastic job, really. I mean if we don’t have that penalty, the tire issue, Terry is right there fighting at the end.
I would like to thank all of our sponsors and my partner, Tim for a great ride at Petit. ”
The team moves on to the final race in the season at Monterey, CA in two weeks (October 20th). Borcheller and Pappas are tied for 10th in the driver’s championship out of the 50 drivers who have participated in this year’s American Le Mans Series. The Petit Le Mans was televised live on the Speed Channel and live across Europe.
The team would especailly like to thank to Bovis Lend Lease who just joined us as a new sponsor, we're looking forward to working with them going forward.