2014 Lone Star Le Mans

The 2014 Lone Star Le Mans was a sports car race sanctioned by the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) held at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, on September 20, 2014. The race served as the twelfth of thirteen scheduled rounds of the 2014 United SportsCar Championship.

International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) president Scott Atherton confirmed that the race was part of the 2014 United SportsCar Championship schedule in October 2013.^[1] It was the first year the event was held as part of the Tudor United SportsCar Championship. The 2014 Lone Star Le Mans was the twelfth of thirteen scheduled sports car races of 2014 by IMSA, and it was the ninth round not held as part of the North American Endurance Cup.^[2] The race was held at the twenty-turn 3.426 mi (5.514 km) Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, on September 20, 2014.^[1]

Before the race, João Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi led the Prototype Drivers' Championship with 285 points, 16 points clear of Jordan Taylor and Ricky Taylor in second.^[3] With 255 points, PC was led by Jon Bennett and Colin Braun with a forty point advantage over Renger van der Zande.^[3] In GTLM, the Drivers' Championship was led by Antonio García with 270 points, 6 points clear of Kuno Wittmer and Jonathan Bomarito.^[3] Dane Cameron led the GTD Drivers' Championship with 244 points, ahead of Bill Sweedler and Townsend Bell on countback.^[3] Chevrolet, Porsche, and Ferrari were leading their respective Manufacturers' Championships, while Action Express Racing, CORE Autosport, Corvette Racing, and Turner Motorsport were their respective Teams' Championships.^[3]

Fifty-two cars were officially entered for the Lone Star Le Mans, with most of the entries being in the Grand Touring Le Mans (GTLM) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) classes.^[4] Action Express Racing (AER), Marsh Racing, VisitFlorida Racing (VFR) and Wayne Taylor Racing (WTR) entered one Chevrolet Corvette DP. Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) and Michael Shank Racing (MSR) entered one Ford-powered Riley MkXXVI. Speedsource had two Lola B12/80 while Extreme Speed Motorsports (ESM) entered one HPD ARX-03b car and OAK Racing entered one Ligier JS P2 chassis with Honda HR28TT 2.8 L Turbo V6 engine.^[5] The Prototype Challenge (PC) class was composed of eleven Oreca FLM09 cars: two from BAR1 Motorsports, Starworks Motorsport and RSR Racing. CORE Autosport, JDC-Miller MotorSports, Performance Tech, PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports, and 8Star Motorsports entered one car each.^[6] GTLM was represented by eleven entries from five different brands. Porsche North America entered three 911 RSRs.^[7][4] In the list of GTD entrants, twenty GT-specification vehicles were represented by six different manufacturers.^[5]

There were two practice sessions preceding the start of the races on Saturday, both on Friday. The first one-hour session ran on Friday morning while the second one-hour session ran on Friday afternoon.^[8]

Friday afternoon's 80-minute four-group qualifying session gave 15-minute sessions to all categories. Cars in GTD were sent out first before those grouped in GTLM, PC, and Prototype had three separate identically timed sessions. Regulations stipulated teams to nominate one qualifying driver, with the fastest laps determining each classes starting order. IMSA would arranged the grid to put all Prototypes ahead of the PC, GTLM, and GTD cars.^[8]

Pole positions in each class are indicated in bold and by ‡. P stands for Prototype, PC (Prototype Challenge), GTLM (Grand Touring Le Mans) and GTD (Grand Touring Daytona).

• ¹ The No. 910 CORE Autosport Porsche initially qualified on pole position for the GTLM class. However, the car was missing a camera pod. By IMSA rules, the entry was moved to the rear of the GTLM field on the starting grid.^[11]
• ² The No. 38 Performance Tech entry had its fastest lap deleted as penalty for causing a red flag during its qualifying session.

Class winners are denoted in bold and ‡. P stands for Prototype, PC (Prototype Challenge), GTLM (Grand Touring Le Mans) and GTD (Grand Touring Daytona).