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ALMS: A Plucky Racing Series Making Its Own Way (Plus Outrageous Crash Footage)


ALMS: A Plucky Racing Series Making Its Own Way (Plus Outrageous Crash Footage)

The American Lemans Series has been around since 1999. It was conceived by and is operated by Dan Panoz the owner of Florida’s Sebring, Canada’s Mosport, and Georgia’s Road Atlanta tracks. There have been stories of its demise really since beginning 10 years ago, but according to a story from RacinToday.com, it is still going strong.

The series showcases several different cars from production based models like the Corvette, all the way through the open wheel prototype cars that run everything from rumbling diesels to turbo, small-inch gas burners. Even if road racing is not your thing, the racers are worth a look on the tube and totally worth the visit to a local track if they are in town.

The story paints a picture of a pretty healthy series that, even if it loses the participation of one of its anchor manufacturers will still be healthy for 2010. The ALMS drew 30,000 people to watch a rain soaked race at Road Atlanta September 25-27.

ALMS is up against the NASCAR controlled Grand Am series, which many predicted would crush it like a bug years ago. Needless to say, that never happened and the two series now exist on parallel tracks. The good news is that they don’t like each other much. Great news for fans as they’re both constantly working to improve their product.

At the ALMS Petit Le Mans in Road Atlanta, racer Scott Sharp suffered a dramatic rollover in practice that is seen in the videos below. The first is the overall view, and the second video is from an in-car camera. Sharp had no serious injuries. Learn more about the incident at AutoRacingDaily.com.

 

 

 

 


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