The Six-hour format at Monterey gives an advantage to Scott Tucker and his Dream Team

For the second year back to back, the American Le Mans Series Monterey at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway on the Monterey Peninsula was a six-hour enduro race that led drivers round the circuit into the post-sundown darkness.

Previously, the race was 4 hours, with the addition of two extra hrs in 2010. For Scott Tucker with the exceptional Level 5 Motorsports racing team, the 2 more hours provide for some space. “We always try to run a clean race, but little mistakes can add up,” Tucker stated last year. “Two extra hours can be a huge advantage even for experienced teams because of those unexpected things you tend to run into with endurance races.”

Feeling Tucker and teammates Christophe Bouchut and Luis Diaz wanted a 120-minute time allowance to overcome complications would have been much easier in 2010, as it was Level 5 Motorsports’ debut year in the Le Mans series. Nevertheless, the David Stone-managed, Microsoft Office-sponsored team took the LMP class championship, and Tucker was rookie of the season.

Inside the 2011 season, driver complications have been few in number for the Wisconsin-based team. Bursting into the season with plenty podium finishes, the Level 5 drivers seemingly experienced only circumstantial difficulties. After making podium at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Long Beach circuit and Imola in Italy, and achieving top LMP2 points and a fourth-place finish at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the group had a record of vast majority clean races, with nary a damage or a ding on their Nos. 55 and 95 entries.

Though, the team has faced those little mistakes that generally add together. At the very first appearance of the season, at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the team-on track for the podium for the better part of the race-finished 8th after Tucker’s No. 95 got trapped in a stack-up in the infamously narrow track. Even with seamless subsequent actions by Bouchut and Diaz, who had just joined the group at the beginning of the season, Level 5 couldn’t make up for the error. In the 24-hour race, additional time isn’t a choice, however the results of the Rolex 24 had been unique had each and every driver just had a little more seat time.

“One of the benefits of a six-hour endurance race is the extra seat time in a racing environment,” Tucker explained at the Monterey. “It maximizes the efficiency of the track time allowed for a driver.”

The team couldn’t fix the complications with time in making podium at Daytona, but they made fast work of perfecting their form and began their successful streak just after the disappointment at Daytona.

But in the Spa-Francorchamps race, a suspension failure sent Bouchut into the sideboards, and the team’s hopes of continuing its incredible streak with another ILMC top finish were dashed.

“It’s one of those things in racing,” Tucker pointed out. “It’s pretty unfortunate-it’s a pretty rough spot on the track for that failure to happen.” The statement is reminiscent of what Tucker had said the prior year about little unexpected things that pop up in endurance races. One more unpredicted development came in the summer for the Level 5 team, when a Honda Performance Development/Wirth Research partnership was producing a cost-capped LMP2 prototype. Tucker reserved the first two out of production, and the Level 5 team commenced waiting for the cars to be ready, ultimately removing of Lime Rock and Silverstone, partially because they didn’t face much competition and partially because they were preparing the latest car for its ALMS debut.

Incidentally, the newest car’s 1st ride was at the second six-hour Monterey at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway. They pulled off a shocking 1st performance in the HPD ARX-01g. Each one of the drivers has undoubtedly improved since the 1st six-hour format in 2010, and certainly the newer, faster car was also a significant factor in the podium finish, but one has to wonder how it would have fared in a four-hour enduro. World-class motorsports competition is a field of strategy, with car, driver order and track time very important considerations.

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