Petit Lemans Atlanta / LG Motorsports entered
 

Hi GUys,

We will be taking the GT2 Corvette out again to the Petit Lemans race at Road Atlanta for the Oct 4th race.

We look forward to seeing some of you there.

WE have a new Nose and front undertray being built for us by Kerry Hitt at ACP. The car just didn't seem to have the same kind of high speed grip that we felt the tires should have provided. So we are having ACP make our WC undertray fit the GT2 car.

My Co Drivers are still not firmed up but I will post that up when we know exactly who they are.

We will be running Dunlop tires. Michelin tires are about 2 seconds faster than Dunlop tires but they will not sell them to us. They picked their 21 cars, and they won't add any more. (is this America?)

But who cares. we will just go and do our best with the Dunlop tires and thank Dunlop for coming to our aid.

In Europe, Dunlop has a winning tire that will not be released in the US until possibly next season.

At any rate, if you are thinking of coming to the race, stop by for a free poster and a free GT2 Corvette hat. (while supplies last)

Thanks for all the support this season in spite of us missing some races after Utah.

Either way, We will see you at Road Atlanta. :)

Thanks
Lou Gigliotti

Where was the free poster and hat at Sebring??? :willy:

Good luck Lou! F1 at Monza reminds all of us that when everyone on the team does their jobs and the right things fall into place, its anybody's ball game! Give em hell, but most importantly, HAVE FUN!

Lou,

Good to read that your GT2 effort is getting back to the race track :cheers:

You have been quiet after the Corvette Racing announcement that next year they are transitioning from GT1 to GT2. I am curious what your thoughts are on that and if that is good, bad, or indifferent for your GT2 efforts.

Good luck at Petit, hopefully no LMP car incidences this time.

Brian

Hey Lou,

If you go to Road America for Petit I think you will be rather lonely. Might have more competition at Road Atlanta :rofl:

Bob

Why does Michelin cater to certain teams and preclude others?

Is the LGM car legal next year in GT2? I read something like it will be GM chassis only.

Good luck on the run!

Yeah, but he would win via forfeit.:D



Good luck Lou!:thumbs:

Lou that is great news. I'm looking forward to getting some great pictures.
I have a New Canon 40D SLR with a new set of lenses. I look forward to getting some good shots of that awesome car. This baby shoots at 6.5 frames per second. :thumbs:

Hope to see you there.

John :flag:

Best of luck, may the race gods bestow massive amounts of speed and grip upon you. :cheers::flag::blueangel:

Guys,

I typed "Atlanta" correct 50% of the time.

I have been quiet since we took a break after Utah because of the way things happened. No tires, no GM help, less than completed car. All of which contributed to losing the team mate/sponsor.

But hey, life is short. We are going to bang some fenders and give it all we have and see what happens.

GM in GT2 ? you make your own conclusions. They had Michelin tires all season only to race bicycles to divert attention from the non race that they were in. Sounds good to me.

My car will be legal for the next 3 years in ALMS and Lemans, so if GM doesn't want my car out there they will have to buy it from me or trade me. :)

I think that Riley and LGM got thrown under the bus, and I got put under the tires. But more on that later.

I just wrote a letter to Michelin asking that they SELL me tires for the event so we won't be 2 seconds off the pace. I think it is the only "fair business practice" decision they can make but I doubt it will happen.

We have some new aero coming on the car for this race. (thanks ACP) We asked for but we were not given any GM wind tunnel time becaues it didn't fit with their "New GT2 strategy". (really?)

Politics is usually the one thing that kills good racing series.

I am looking forward to seeing you guys. we will try to get the car up to the Corvette Corral again this year.

Thanks again for the support.

Lou Gigliotti

This is great news....

Lou, Curran one of the drivers?

See you in the paddock :D

Get Drissi back out there, i'm sure he has a Movie to promote :lurk:

Eric was going to be one of the drivers but he has to leave Atlanta on Friday to race at VIR in the last Koni Grand Am race.

We were really looking forward to working with him again

Thanks
Lou g

Lou,

It will be good to see you back on the track...:thumbs:

Lou,

glad to see that you will be racing at Atlanta! :cheers: I love the Corvette brand, and it really pisses me off that you are getting zero help from GM. :bs:bs Wish I could be at the race to get me a poster and hat. want to fly me to the other side of the states for the race? :rofl::rofl: Your vette looks awesome in person, I was at the Long Beach race. good luck!

Lou, good luck at PLM. Any chance you can make the season finale at Laguna Seca?

:iagree:

I've just missed meeting up with you last year and up at Portland a while before. Though I did stand about 20 feet away when you ripped onto track for qualifying on Saturday last year. :smiliedrool:

Good luck in Atlanta!
:cheers:
Chris

GM racing is the height of stupidity. I guess they don't want you competing with them like in WC with the Caddies. I am sure they will put the stop on you getting Michelin's also. Time to bury GM Racing and Michelin with emails asking if they are afraid of competition and free enterprise.

CONGRATS Lou!!!!! this is great news!! good luck!

best of luck lou, let em know your out there:thumbs:
john

You have a contact address? I'll be more than happy to add my two cents.

Good Luck Lou

:cheers:

I am looking forward to meeting you down at Atlanta! As far as the GM crap goes, they really are making incredibly stupid decisions.

GM should be helping all Corvettes, not to the extent they do the factory team, but a Corvette doing well while racing the European best should be something they SHOULD be shooting for. Once again, bad decisions being made at GM. Is there ANYONE over there that thinks things all the way through outside of Corvette racing. (I forgive them for not thinking it through, they want wins, period.).

I will be cheering you on Lou, hope to see you at the Corral and in the paddock!

Go kick some ass!!! I wouldn't waste time with the emails right now. You should figure out how to make that thing fly. GM and Michlein are on the high horse right now racing against themselves. Work on the Dunlop boys and get those tires working to the max. I'm sure you have a solid tire program. We have found time using this. Warm up to around 125-135 degrees. Pull off track and scrap all the rocks and crap off using a torch and scraper. Then put them aside for at least over night.

Coat them, grind them, soak them, pee on them, heat them, rub them, shave them, file them, get those damn things up to speed. Just some ideas, isn't it great when the right stuff is out there, and a million dollars can't even buy a single damn tire. What about those overseas tires from Dunlop??? What the hell has Goodyear been up to???

Give them hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Randy

Lou, great news before we see you in Atlanta, I"ll see you Saturday to pick up a hood and brake ducts..... and anything else that I can't seem to live without.

:cool:
Good Luck Lou!!
:cheers:

Don't forget to stop by our trailer to get a free GT2 Corvette hat while they last.

Thanks

See you there.

LG

Can't make the race in person but I'll be watching anyway on the tube. Good luck Lou.

How is Michelin afraid of competition? Only Dunlop and Michelin supply tires to all four classes. What has Michelin done to prevent Yokohama, Kumho, Hankook, and Falken from entering all four classes?

Dunlop is not as big as Michelin, but Virgo Motorsport have a partnership with Dunlop that helped give them the GT2 championship in the Le Mans Series in 2007 and 2008.

http://www.crash.net/motorsport/le_m...gt2_crown.html

http://www.dunloptires.com/racingEve...ans/index.html

Pratt & Miller have helped C6.R teams in the FIA GT Championship and the Le Mans Series.

:cool: :steering:

What is the reason behind Michelin only going with 21 teams? Is it competition or is it something in the rules that won't let them supply tires to more than 21 teams? I'm really curious to find out the reason.

Lou -- When you were choosing tire manufacturers this spring, did you have Michelin as a choice at that time? Just curious.

Didn't Goodyear buy Dunlop a few years back or am I mistaken?

It's funny that Michelin and Bridgestone are having the same battle in MotoGP that they were having in F1. Even the Michelin motorcycle rain tires are better than the Bridgestones, but the Bridgestones are the overall better tires in the series.

Question -- Does Bridgestone supply tires to the Le Mans series? If not, they'd be a great contender. They kick butt in just about every other motorsports series.

Yes we "applied" to Michelin to buy tires and we were turned down. Some manufacturers will go to bat for teams running their cars but in our case that did not happen. ANd michelin denied our request to purchase tires for the series.

I wrote to Michelin again this past week, asking that they sell me tires for only the Petit Lemans race, and again we were denied.

Their choice, and the result is that even with the Dunlop tires that we can get in the USA (not the european tires) we will still be roughly 2 seconds off just with the tires.

GM racing needed Michelin tires to compete against each other. I would have suggested that they run on Shaved street tires because they would have still finished first and last. But who am I to consider logic.

At any rate, we were not and are not allowed to buy Michelin tires for the ALMS series. Bridgestone is not in the series, and they do not have plans to enter at the moment.

Dunlop may bring the European tire over next season but who knows.

There are other tire companies out there that want to step up to the plate but if they do, it may be a couple of seasons before they can compete at the front so it will take some patience for the teams running them.

The problem with the perception of any team is that if you are not at the front, you are ridiculed even though you might be within the magic 2 second margin that the tires account for.

On the other hand, if we do well with out Michelin tires, then it will be an even bigger feather in our cap.

Thanks guys,

See you at Petit

LG

I know that all of that drama would just motivate me more to try and stick it to both Micheline and Corvette Racing.

The Corvette Racing team runs full time in which of those series? Oh yeah, they DO NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

American LeMans Series is what we are discussing.

Give them hell out there Lou... sounds to me like you could make those 2 seconds personal and drive extra hard to jam it to them.

Although I love the whole Corvette racing, the cars, the drivers etc... the politics SUCK! What really sucks that they will only support THEIR Corvette. When you look at this forum, what you see is support for ALL Corvettes, they should look at what the community is really all about and try to lead by example. Lou, we will all be cheering you on buddy. :thumbs::thumbs:

btw, can I get first crack at some of those Dunlops you'll be tossin' :cheers:

It seems to me that the tire issue is one of the biggest hurdles for more teams joining the ALMS. If your not on Michelin's, your not going to be competitive. Almost all other series are using "spec" tires so I don't think that's the answer here. ALMS must be different and allow the technology competition as well. However, the must open up access to tires. Every team needs to have access to every tire.

Teams and sponsors can only take so much before the decide to run Grand Am.:ack:

Correct me if iI am wrong, but isnt Michelin owned by the French?

Oh god, here we go :rolleyes:

I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?:rolleyes: (It was a joke my friend)

well this is interesting,heard LGM let all of their team members go,just a bad deal overall for everyone. Understand you had a great bunch of guys,must have been hard to lay them off with the bad job market. Do you plan to bring them back or start with new people. Understand in Utah your crew pulled off a fast pitstop, would be nice to have the same guys working together to stay consistant.

It is hard to keep paying the great race crew that we had when we did not plan on going to any races until we got some sponsorship.

It did hurt having to let good race team guys leave but it is still a business and losing money doesn't make for good business.

My team mate for this race is bringing a great sponsor with him. Lucky for us that we have a great group of mechanics that run the street side of LG motorsports, and they picked up the slack.

We had 8 guys working on the car tonight till Midnight. (typical for us to work till Midnight)

the car will be on track at MSR on Wednesday, and then on track again this sat and sunday in Atlanta. we still have one of the best pit crews around but it will be hard to match our 9.5 sec-- 4 tire change at Utah. that was great.

We have Bill Riley doing the engineering and strategy this race also, so that is a plus.

Look, we all know that the ALMS is tough. We need a tire manufacturer to step up to the R&D plate and make a stab at building some really good tires. It won't happen overnight but it can happen.

If bridgestone, Dunlop or Falken will step up to the plate then over time, we can get a little more competitive with the Michelins.

My team mates for Atlanta will be Marc Goossens, Tomy drissi and me. My son Louis and Chris will handle the tires, and we have a total of 11 crew members coming for Petit.

Should be good.

PS, Drissi will have a great soon to be released Movie as his Sponsor on the car so keep an eye out for it.

Thanks
lou G

:thumbs:

Best of luck with the tire situation and in the race...I'll be routing for you!

I'll never forget what General Swartzkoff said about the French...

"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordian." :)

Lou, did you not interview Jace Meier for the race?

Very glad to hear you are going to this race, very much so.
I met a few of your crew at MMP and they were really great guys and very dedicated but also I felt their pain in things to come:(

As for GM in general, biggest dump arse car manf the world has ever known and look at what they have done for themselves, keep pulling that flush handle and spinning down further into...........

In some ways they are turning around but I have a hard time imagining they will ever be great again.

Corvette, only thing they have done for a very long time I respect at all(again doing some other things better now, finally but still way behind than what they should be doing in most areas)

Michelin, what can we say, they are French. One exception is my kids grandmother, she was very young but did all she could as a part of the Resistance, one very cool ex mother in law I have to say, tough as hell as well:)

-------------

I very much enjoyed your performance in Utah, if not for the Italian Job and Lucas the Jackarse you just may of had an incredible finish, lack of prime tires be damned!

-------------

Go get em!!!

Rick

:rofl: :rofl: He wanted tooooooo much money.

For Immediate Release :


The “Flame painted Corvette” will be on the loose again.

12-12-08 Is THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

For Immediate release: LGM to Petit 08

LG Motorsports Corvette GT-2 to Petit Lemans

Lou Gigliotti of LG Motorsports will team with Tomy Drissi for the 10 hour Petit Lemans race in the Riley Technologies Corvette.

The car will carry Sponsorship from the Fox Movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” that will be in theaters December 12th.

Movie Trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi333185305/

Tomy Drissi said, “I am very pleased to be associated with LG Motorsports in the ALMS Petit Lemans race. Lou and his group have been a top Corvette team in the US and the Riley Corvette is a great car, so this should be a good race.”

The Corvette has been updated slightly and should be quicker than the Utah race where the team ran as high as 3rd before a good 6th place finish.

Gigliotti points out that, “Riley and our LG Team have completed some updates that we are very pleased with. There is a good possibility that Marc Goossens will be the third driver, which we would be very happy to have on board. But that is not firmed up yet.”

Bill Riley will handle the Engineering duties and call out strategy for the team as well. Riley helped to lift the Riley Mathews Daytona Prototype team to some recent wins, as well as racing their prototype car at Lemans.

According to Riley,” Lou and LG Motorsports was the first to step up to purchase our new GT2 Corvette and we are glad to help them in anyway that we can for the Petit race.”

LG Motorsports is one of America’s leading suppliers of Corvette Performance and enhancement parts including their “LG Pro Long Tube Headers” and other Corvette related parts.

“Racing our Corvette in the ALMS Series gives our world wide customers a team to root for.” Said Gigliotti,” we have a saying, ‘We race, you win’ and we live by that.”

The car will be on Dunlop Tires for this race and the team is very optimistic about the improved performance. The development that Dunlop has put into their tires is commendable and the team has also been hard at work on the main systems of the car to make it more competitive.

Contact: LG Motorsports at Sales@ LGMotorsports.com for further information.
972-429-1963

Sounds good Lou, see you on Thursday.

Any pictures of the new nose design and other updates to the car?

Well It looks like my Dad and I are going to be able to make the trip down. I was looking at ticket prices today and have a question: I have heard that their will be a corvette parking area. Do I need to purchase an infield parking pass to gain access to it?

Lou, congrats on the new sponcer :thumbs:

I look forward to seeing some of you guys down there.

Eric

I think you have to call Road Atlanta and specify that you want corvette corral tickets. It is a special ticket and it gets you access to that area. I visited it at Sebring without a pass and they wouldn't let me in on race day. I did sneak in on the practice days so I could see the ZR1.:cheers:

Thanks I will call them tmr and see what the deal is.

Just got off the phone ordering tickets. See you guys down there :cheers:

Eric

If time permits, we usually try to DRIVE the race car up to the Corvette Corral. :D

But either way, stop by and say hello in the paddock.

Thanks

LG :thumbs:

I need to buy a lottery ticket :lol: This is great news!!!

Yes Sir, we had planned on it.

Is there any chance you'll be at Laguna Seca?

- Mark

I am working on the deal now. It depends on what the car looks like after a 10 hour race. :eek:

Later,

LG

Good luck ... hope it works out, would love to see you there again this year in the main event!

- Mark

Final countdown for Flying Lizard Motorsports

Jörg Bergmeister going for 6th-straight PLM victory

http://www.americanlemans.com/news/Article.aspx?ID=4799

Endurance race promotion underway

http://www.americanlemans.com/news/Article.aspx?ID=4804

:willy:

Have a good clean race! We'll be hoping to see you whoop up at Petit and Laguna Seca!

Tafel Racing Enjoys "Home Field" Advantage for Petit Le Mans

second in GT2 points

9-26-08

# 71 Ferrari F430 GTC: Michelin tires with drivers Dominik Farnbacher and Dirk Müller

# 73 Ferrari F430 GTC: Michelin tires with drivers Alex Figge and Jim Tafel (Pierre Ehret shown on IMSA's entry list)

http://www.tafelracing.com/index.php...t-Le-Mans.html

John Thawley has a photo gallery up at Trackbites of pre-Petit testing, including a shot of LGM's #28

http://www.trackbytes.com/recent-pho...ing-pre-petit/

Completely awesome

http://www.trackbytes.com/picture/th...leryImage=true

Hi GUys,

We spent yesterday putting in our fresh race engine. Still working on dialing in the chassis and the car is going fairly well with the new front down force.

We are back on track Wed for 90 min.

thanks for the props

Lou G

LGM

Looks like theres no more chin on the new nose and the radiator opening is much more square and upright. I also dont see the fins on either side before the wheel, seems like there is a fender flare there instead.

I hope the new nose does well and good luck getting everything ready Lou!

Just turned on the PL and I see after 200+ laps, LG has only completed 37 laps! What happened to Lou after only 1 hr and 16 minutes???

It was mechanical. I will let Lou tell the story. But I will say he and the team were in good spirits even after they had retired the car.

Hi guys,

the car was fast but still not fast enough. We qualified about one second off in 7th place. The problem that we had comes from having to use a stock LS3 cylinder head.

The Head can not take the kind of loads that we put on it during a race with restrictors that we use.

With a restrictor plate engine, you must run high compression to get the power out of it. The stock head is too weak, and it "lifts" and starts to slightly leak compression into the water jacket.
This then puts pressure in the water system, and it pushes the water out slowly until the water level is low enough to over heat the engine.

The water temp was running below 180 degrees for the race, when the temp jumped up to about 230 all at once. We came in behind the wall and put water in it and tried to run again. At this point the head was pushing water out too fast and in just 3 more laps the temp went up beyond what was acceptable and to avoid scattering the engine, we parked it.

Still, the car is showing progress. We need to get the same heads that the GT1 corvette team is using. They denied them to us at the first of the season, but we are hopeful that we can get them approved for our car before we take it out again.

Thanks to all those who came to see us. It is always great to meet the people that make the Corvette forum click.

Thanks

Lou Gigliotti

Man I hated to hear it Lou. We came down in the pits after not seeing you on the track for a few mins. When you told me that you had lost a head gasket I didn't really know what to say. You have have worked so hard and were doing great. I really hope things will work out so you can get back in the series soon. It was great to see a "small" shop out there competeing with the big boys :thumbs:

Eric

Sorry to hear it Lou :sadangel:

Will they let you brace the stock head?

Perhaps with a really stiff valve cover or shaft rockers?

Lou
Would it be considered a more positive note that for next year you will have those other guys lobbying ALMS to allow a better cyl. head for the GT2 class Corvette?
I'm not much of a engineer or engine developer, but would it be easier and cost less if the Vette was forced to run a lower compression ratio and then be allowed a larger intake restrictor to stay with the current head?

Locke

The GT1 heads on an LS3 block. sounds interesting.

Lou,

Just curious, was this issue apparant at the earlier races this year, or have you increased compression since the Utah race?

Hi Lou, great meeting you before the race and thanks for the hat off your head. I was sure sorry to see you pull in with problems.

What's going to happen next year when Corvette Racing drops into GT2?

It was great watching you...

:thumbs:

Joe,
It happened at Sebring and we dropped the compression for St Pete and Long Beach.

For Utah we raised it again because of the thin air at High altitude with success.

Then for Atlanta, on the Sat test, the Utah compression failed the same way, so for the race we had a lower compression 12 hour engine but I guess it was not low enough.

Yes, the GT1 heads will be on the GT2 factory cars, and if they will give them to us (which GM would not earlier) then the problem will be solved.

We seem to be on the opposite side when it comes to consideration from Chevy racing.

All the hats we gave away for free is also an unusual story.

We had our hats made with the word "Corvette and the flags" small on the brim. Chevy told us to destroy them because we did not get a "license". I at least got them to agree to allow us to hand them out for free, (no profit, so no license fee).

I hope that you all enjoy the 1000 free hats that we should have sold for $20 to help support the effort racing a Chevy in GT2. Instead we paid for the hats and in reality, we were happy to give them to any Corvette owner that came by the trailer.

Thanks for the support. It is the grass root support from places like the Corvette forums and the Corvette Corral folks that make it fun.

:thumbs::thumbs::flag:

LG

Any chance for Laguna Seca?

What about the LS7 heads or the heads on the ZR1? dont those have more provisions for head bolts to address this issue (especially the LS9 w/the supercharger)?:bigears

I too was sorry to see the problems for the #28 Riley GT2 LG Corvette in the race! :sad:

I did my part and gave Lou my silver sharpie so everyone could get their posters signed in the corral when his died. :lol:

I hope to see LG and yourself back if possible in '09 LouG!

I'll be buying my share of parts over the winter from LGM to help fund the cause.

No.

:D

Like I said, the corral and the forum are the best part of racing a Corvette.

I got home and watched the taped race, and the first thing I saw was a shot of the crowd and one of our LG #28 hats :rofl:
Unfortunately that was about all we saw of the LG effort.

Thanks again, and see you at the races.

LG

It's amazing to me that you picked a Corvette to race and GM wouldn't even let you sell the damn hats with their logo on it. WTF? :nono:

EMI ( Equity Managment Inc ) the company responsible for Chevy Marketing is not easy to work with or get Chevy Lic.

Then if it says "Corvette Racing" that is another Corporate Logo to deal with.

There were quite a few #28 hats in the Corvette Corral, it was great to see so many.

What if you had the hats made by someone that had a license (like Madhouse Marketing/Corvettesport) and then sold them. Mark at Madhouse is great to deal with. If you went this route would this have gotten around the licensing issue. I would have gladly paid $25 or even $30 for a hat.

Hope to see you out there again.

:thumbs:

It was great to meet you Lou. I really enjoyed talking to you at the trailer. Bringing the the car to the corral was a very nice surprise as well.

Sure hope to see you at some races next year, have my fingers crossed for you picking up a good sponsor as well.

Lou, I'll be sending you some more photos tomorrow.

http://www.pnwzr1.com/images/ALMS/LGM_petit.jpg

Got to Petit after the LG car had been parked, but I got a picture with my daugher and her friend standing with the car in the paddock.

Next year in ALMS promises to be wild. Lou, what are your plans in that regard?

Hope to see you guys out there next year...

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l2...emans/PT11.jpg
photo by johninar