Audi tops opening day at Sebring.

Audi kicked off the American Le Mans Series Winter Test in perfect fashion after setting the pace during the first day of running at Sebring.

Defending Series LMP1 champions Allan McNish and Dindo Capello, along with four-time Sebring champion Tom Kristensen and Mike Rockenfeller, shared running in the Audi, with their car bettering Marco Werner's 2007 pole run of 1min 44.974secs.

Diesel cars held the top two spots on the day with the Peugeot 908 of Nic Minassian, Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrazin only 0.153 seconds back as the two manufacturers hit the track together for the first time since the Le Mans 24 Hours last summer.

However, the Peugeot suffered a significant oil leak during the second session of the day and did not return to the track for the final test period.

Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas were third fastest overall and quickest among the LMP2 entries. Last year's class champions set a time of 1min45.155secs in Penske Racing's No. 7 Porsche RS Spyder, nearly a second better than Bernhard's pole time in last year's Twelve Hours. They were followed by the sister car of Sascha Maassen and Ryan Briscoe with a 1min 45.214secs, set in the day's third session. The Acura contingent was paced by the Patron Highcroft Racing entry of David Brabham, Scott Sharp and Stefan Johansson at 1min 45.638secs.

Risi Competizione, last year's GT2 winner at Sebring and the defending series champion in class, showed no off-season rust with a stellar time of 2min 01.192secs in the #62 Ferrari F430 GT of Jaime Melo and Mika Salo. The time was 1.247 seconds better than Melo's class pole time from last year's race. Melo, Salo and Johnny Mowlem won last year's class title at Sebring by 0.202 seconds over the Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche in the closest finish in race history.

The Risi Ferrari was a full second faster than Tafel Racing's Ferrari driven by Dirk Muller, Dominik Farnbacher, Pierre Ehret and team owner Jim Tafel. Monday marked the first running of the car since Tafel took delivery of it last week.

source: http://www.crash.net/motorsport