ALMS - First night race at Laguna Seca

[TomTurtle]

Had a great time at Laguna Seca last night; cold, wet, noisy and loving it! Not like the typical race; a continuous roar because of the different types of cars. I hope they make this a nighttime regular each year! Biggenst crowd I've seen at Laguna in a long time. Today's broadcast on NBC did not do justice at all to the GT cars; they seemed to focus on the Protypes and C5's!

Audi R8R spinout in first lap at Turn 2


Protos and C5s get past without incident in Turn 2


GT3s heading into 2


Flying Lizard (van Overbeek) in a Proto sandwich


Turn 4 at dusk


GT3 in Turn 6


Turn 10 lightshow

[TomTurtle]

Correction on the second shot:

[Jack Olsen]

Very cool.

[PorscheGuy79]

Wow very nice shots, what kinda camera did you use? I went to the ALMS at Road America and my shots didnt turn out nearly as good

[masraum]

Yeah, nice shots, got any more?

I saw about 20 minutes of the race today, didn't realize it was available to me. Hopefully NBC will show more of the ALMS races this year, I got that impression. Hopefully their coverage will also improve. I got tired of seeing the prototypes in the pits.

[jyl]

I drove down with a buddy, Tom you and we must have been within 40' of each other during lap 1. I especially liked it when night fell, and then even more when it started raining and chaos ensued. However, next time I'm bringing an AM radio - it was too hard to follow what was going on.

The 911 got nice and dirty on the drive home, what with the first rain of the year and all. Somehow that was very satisfying. Looking at the car after a 130 mile drive, wet and filthy and dripping, feels like you've got a real working machine instead of a garage gertie.

[TomTurtle]

Matthew:

I used a Nikon D100 with a 40-125 zoom (3.5/5.3) lens with a speed setting of 800-1000 for the night shots. Obviously flash is impossible because of the distancs involved unless the area is lit. Shooting at night at a race is very tricky in that you need a zoom lens but the lens I used was the fastest I had. A "fast" zoom lens tends to be VERY expensive. One of these days I am going to get closer to the action with a press pass - I hate dealing with the fences/other obstructions!

Steve:

Will post a few more pics tonight.

[BGCarrera32]

I saw it on NBC yesterday and thought for race coverage it wasn't bad. The in-car shots from the RS8 were incredible...I wish they aired more of it throughout the year...

[emcon5]

It was a good race, night racing was very cool.

I took a bunch of pictures, mostly between turns 9 and 10.









The rest are here:
http://www.ngnl.net/alms/lagunaalms2004.html

Tom

[cbeers]

A lot of the races from this weekend were covered on the SPEED channel (channel #607 on my Direct TV). It was one after another and a LOT of fun to watch the P cars ripping around with others. Also they aired the Porsche Supercup series - ALL Porsches

Maybe Speed will re-run some races as they do that often...


-Chris

[emcon5]

Originally posted by cbeers
A lot of the races from this weekend were covered on the SPEED channel (channel #607 on my Direct TV).

The ALMS race was on NBC, on Sunday. They condensed a four hour race to two hours.

I also got to see Derek Bell strolling through the paddock, as well as Porsche factory driver Patrick Long, and C5R pilot/GTS class driving champion Ron Fellows.

The flyover was pretty cool as well:





Tom

[GIBSON]

Great photos. Wish I had time to take a few more but was too busy with all the things behind the scenes. We were scheduled to have a flyover on Sunday as well, a C-5, but the ceiling was too low to bring that big thing in. Would have been great to see
that size plane fly over but the P-51's were great as well.
We had a difficult time getting all the lights set up, we had about 15 rented light stands situated in just the right places. The big problem was lighting for the fans but not getting light in the driver's eyes. Seemed to work out well. All the drivers I spoke with seemed to thing it worked well. We nearly doubled out attendance from last year so ALMS was happy, as was the track.
They had their year-end banquet in Monterey so it worked out
well for everyone.
Thursday night we had a night practice session, the community was a bit upset about the noise but not too many phone calls.
ALMS says they are going to impose some noise restrictions next year, some of the cars are pretty loud. I'm still a little deaf but no complaints.
The races on Sunday were great, a Porsche took the World Challenge GT race, beating Boris Said. After his comments last
weekend in Grand Am about kicking Porsche's butt I really enjoyed seeing him loose to a 911. He was a bit more subdued
in victory circle.
We may get a Grand Am race next year to start the season, still
in negotiations but it looks good. So, we'll start the season with sports cars and end with the same.
Here's a photo of all the trophies just for ALMS, 32 in all with
32 magnums of champagne clean up. Took us till really late Saturday night just to get the place back in shape. The rain did not help.

I had a minute to stick the camera through the fence and catch a Flying Lizard driver change:

All in all, a great way to end the season.

[TomTurtle]

Great work Bruce! Had a blast and I was really impressed with how easy it was to get out considering the size of the crowd! My son and I are really looking forward to the MotoGP race in July!

Per requests, more pics from Saturday:

Turn 2 first lap, not a scratch on the Proto, Part I


Turn 2 first lap, not a scratch on the Proto, Part II


Proto, Saleen and Viper entering Turn 2


Viper in garage


GT3 between Turns 4 and 5


Proto between Turns 4 and 5


Audi R8 exiting turn 4. To me there are Protos and then there is the Audi R8!


GT3 at dusk, Turn 6. Little out of focus but I liked the vista.


GT3 Lizard Flying faster than light at Turn 6