Nizer

Hadn't heard about the penalty. It would be interesting to understand why they feel the need to penalize a car for spinning tires, if anyone has details.

http://patricklong.com/p5-at-le-mans-for-team-america/

Despite leading the 24 Hours of Le Mans after the fourth hour of running, a podium finish was not to be for the No. 77 Dempsey Racing Porsche 911 RSR today. Patrick Long took the start and, through stellar driving and perfect strategy calls from the team, led not only the entire GTE-AM class in his opening quadruple stint at La Sarthe, but also all of the “faster” GTE-PRO cars as well. Long and teammates Patrick Dempsey and Joe Foster delivered consistently quick lap times throughout the 24-hour marathon, but a three minute stop-and-hold penalty for spinning their wheels in pit lane, and a brief trip to the garage for a mechanical repair dampened the team’s hopes for a podium.

BTW, full results here if anyone is interested. Amazing how difficult it is to find basic info....

http://www.24h-lemans.com/wpphpFichi...-after-24h.pdf

fleadh

That's been a rule at Le Mans for awhile. Notice how crowded pit lane is and there is no wall separating the crew/garages from the cars. It's to reduce the chance of people losing control of the car and hitting anyone while dumping the clutch.

It was a shame, but even sitting at home I knew of that rule. I'm sure Dempsey was feeling comfortable and fast (as he showed in his stints) and was just doing his normal thing and forgot about the rule (one of the most fun things in racing is doing a big smokey burnout when you leave the pitbox!). I saw it live on TV and was hoping the officials didn't notice because I knew it was going to be a penalty.... I suppose the downside of being Dempsey is you can't get away with *anything* since someone is *always* watching you. :-)

-mike

Nizer

So it was Dempsey? That would make more sense. A lot of the reports on the incident that I found suggested it was Pat. Too bad either way.