From Lemans to Lime Rock

Le Mans and Lime Rock Park couldn’t be more different. For starters, the two are six time zones and more than 4,500 miles apart. The circuits are worlds apart as well – Le Mans stretches more than 8.3 miles with more than 20 turns while Lime Rock is 1.54 miles with seven turns. With three weeks separating the 24 Hours of Le Mans and this weekend’s American Le Mans Northeast Grand Prix, Flying Lizard Motorsports’ team manager Eric Ingraham gave us a few thoughts on going from Le Mans to Lime Rock.

The toughest part of the transition:
“The biggest single challenge in the transition from Le Mans to Lime Rock is a mental one, not a logistical one. Specifically, recovering from three weeks away from home, working in a different environment and a different country, then reintegrating into running two cars in the American Le Mans Series and refocusing on the GT2 championships here."

Preparing the car:
“The car came directly back to our shop here in Sonoma. The car and all of the equipment left Le Mans on Monday, 6/18, and arrived back here on Friday, 6/22, via SFO and Heathrow before that. We reloaded our American Le Mans Series transporters here and then shipped everything off to Lime Rock at the end of last week."

The Le Mans car and livery:
The Le Mans car was the No. 45 car in the American Le Mans Series. We loved what Troy (Lee) did with our livery for Le Mans and would love to do something in the Series like that again. But the intent was primarily to do something special for Le Mans, which is such a special race itself. The Le Mans livery was a vinyl wrap and we’ve decided to freshen the paint for the stretch run in the American Le Mans Series."

From setup to setup:
“Going from a Le Mans engineering setup back to an American Le Mans Series setup is not much more work than we would normally do between races. Lime Rock is a particular track in that most folks run an asymmetric setup there, so some additional work is required but nothing too significant. There is a fair amount of work required in pulling out all of the ACO specific wiring harnesses (Stack, radio, etc.) and reinstalling the American Le Mans Series parts in their place."

Round Six of the American Le Mans Series is the American Le Mans Northeast Grand Prix, set for 3 p.m. ET on Saturday, July 7 at Lime Rock Park. CBS Sports will televise the race at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 8. American Le Mans Radio will have live coverage at americanlemans.com, which also will feature IMSA Live Timing & Scoring.